


The World Is Tumbling Down

by AndyAO3



Series: Teddy Shepard Is A Little Shit [4]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: And also very blunt, Canon Divergence starting at Horizon, He has no time for anyone's bullshit, M/M, Renegade custom Shepard, Slow Build, Slow Burn, Well he's at least renegon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-11
Updated: 2015-06-08
Packaged: 2018-03-17 08:45:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 19
Words: 47,928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3522926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AndyAO3/pseuds/AndyAO3
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He took the words "you can't" as a challenge, saw authority figures as speed bumps, and even death only managed to piss him off.</p><p>EDIT: Now with art!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. let the stars fall down

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jupiter_james](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jupiter_james/gifts).



> I'm not sure if I wanna keep going with this or not. Thoughts, internet?
> 
> This chapter's un-beta'd but if I do more, they'll be beta'd by morphia@AO3 / morphia-writes@tumblr because that is my lovely beta who puts up with my shit. And thank you to jupiterjames@AO3 for being such a horrible enabler.
> 
> EDIT: NOW WITH ART! 8D   
> http://logicalfangirl.tumblr.com/image/116023396340 by me  
> http://ank-shey.tumblr.com/image/115598161945 by ank-shey

The ship was under attack.

They didn't know who it was. Only that the Normandy was being shredded. Commander Ted Shepard could tell as much from the blaring alarms that signalled depressurization and hull breaches.

He pulled on his helmet and sealed it. _No time to panic._

"Commander!" Alenko yelled, bounding down the corridor towards him.

"Get everyone to the escape shuttles," Shepard barked.

"Joker's still in the cockpit, he won't listen--" Alenko was wearing his helmet but Shepard could imagine his brow furrowing in that little angry, determined way it did. "I'm not leaving, either," he declared.

"The hell you aren't." Shepard turned to him. Glared. Alenko was a hell of a lot taller than Ted was, but that didn't stop him. Not that it ever had. "Get everyone out, LT. That's an order. I'll drag Joker's crippled ass out myself if I have to."

"Shepard--"

" _That's an order._ " Shepard snarled. He shouldn't have to yell and he shouldn't have to push. Not with Alenko, who was unfailingly loyal.

Except he might have to, this time. Alenko paused; he seemed to be considering disobedience, for once. This was the one case where Shepard wouldn't have encouraged it. It still wasn't hard to imagine his expression, with his brows likely knotted together with indecision and his lip maybe caught between his teeth. Kaidan had always been easy to read, even if all Shepard could see was his body language.

"...Aye aye," he said reluctantly. Then he left.

 _Good._ One less casualty to worry about. More specifically though, one less friend dead because they'd been caught with their proverbial pants around their ankles. Shepard turned on his heel, took a split second to activate his mag-boots in case the artificial gravity had gone out, and bolted down the corridor himself, towards the cockpit. Fucking Joker. Always having to be so stubborn.

Reminded him of himself. He was getting soft. But he'd always been soft on Joker. _Hah_. This was what he got for being a friend to his crew, huh?

Ran to the stairwell, but the path was blocked by debris. _Fuck_. The wasn't time to shift it - even with biotics - so he just detoured around it. Then he stepped out into the CIC. It hit him that the _Normandy_ was dead in the water when he saw that above his head there was nothing but stars, space, and Alchera looming to their starboard side.

Mag-boots made crossing the CIC like a slog, but he was thankful for them; he doubted that artificial gravity was even remotely functional anymore.

He got to the cockpit, and sure enough, there was Joker. The pilot had put up a barrier to keep the air in, but he'd at least had the sense to put a helmet on while he was at it, his gnarled hands practically dancing over the haptic interface as he tried to keep the dying ship working. His arms were still bare, though, and so was part of his neck; absolute vacuum wouldn't be pleasant. Shepard bit the inside of his cheek, pushed his concerns to the back of his mind, and clapped his hand on Joker's shoulder.

It didn't matter whether it would be pleasant or not. Unpleasant was preferable to dead.

"The fuck are you still doing up here? We gotta move, Joker."

Joker shook his head quickly. "No! I won't abandon the _Normandy_! I can still save her--"

"Bullshit!" Shepard snapped. "The _Normandy_ 's dead, and I'm not gonna let the best pilot in the fleet go down with her!"

"No, I can do it, I just have to--" Another alarm started going off alongside the countless others that were reflected on the surface of Joker's helmet. "Oh no."

The cruiser was coming around for another attack.

Shepard muttered a curse under his breath and heaved Joker up by his arm, ignoring the pilot's pained squawk of protest; if they didn't get out of there soon, a few fractures would be the least of Joker's concerns. With a thought he summoned up his biotics to put a kinetic barrier around Joker to help him drag the taller man along and protect him as well as possible from the vacuum of space.

Another beam hit the _Normandy_ just as he was shoving Joker through the airlock and into the escape shuttle.

It ignited an explosion in one of the few remaining intact fuel lines. There was no air for a fire, but the shockwave from it blew Joker back into the shuttle and sent Shepard flying. He heard Joker over the comm just as he managed to make a grab for an extruding piece of gnarled metal that had once been part of the hull.

 _I'm dead_ , he realized. _I'm fucking dead. There's no recovering from this one._

 _Welp_.

He fought the pull of his backwards inertia enough to drag his way along to the nearest haptic interface that'd send Joker's escape shuttle off into the abyss, far away from the twisted remains of the once-beautiful _Normandy_.

The last blast from the unidentified cruiser knocked him away again with a final shockwave as the barrier that Joker had set up around the cockpit burst. An alert sounded in his helmet, signalling that his suit's integrity had been breached.

 _Fifteen seconds of consciousness if I do it right? Let's do it wrong, make it a little quicker_.

He reached back and yanked the hoses from his suit's CO2 scrubbers, then took a deep breath that he knew vacuum conditions would rip out of his lungs.

Then he unsealed his helmet and let the air rush out.

 _Like ripping off an old bandage_.

He was out cold before he even hit the outer edge of Alchera's atmosphere.

~~~

Art by me!

 


	2. break the sword of justice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Armor and common sense are for other people. Other people who are pussies. Clearly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At time of writing, I have a cat in my closet, making a nest out of a pile of stolen socks and scarves. No relation to what's written, I just felt like putting that there. 
> 
> He's not a very SMART cat. Anyway, here's another chapter! 8D

Bright white light piercing its way into his eyes. The too-clean smell of carefully measured oxygen and medicine, tinged faintly with a whiff of blood. The discomfort and slightly choked feeling of tubes in his nose and throat, along with a vague _off_ feeling that told him he'd be in pain were it not for the all-encompassing numbness that implied he was heavily sedated.

 _Operating table... where?_ His thoughts were muddy and clouded; he could perceive things, he could hear the beep of monitoring devices and see the lights and make out the sound of voices, but it was hard to connect them to concrete notions.

"My God, Miranda. I think he's waking up."

 _Who the fuck are you?_ he wondered. He tried to turn his head but everything hurt. He saw movement out of the corner of his vision, tried to follow it with his eyes, but something stuck in his neck tugged painfully when he moved. _That's probably an IV._

An argument ensued, between a woman named "Miranda" and a man named "Wilson". He caught a glimpse of long black hair, and went to reach in that general direction; his hand felt like a lead weight at the end of his arm, which felt similarly useless.

A pulling sensation told him that he'd just ripped out another IV or tube or something. _Oh good._ The woman came back into view, with her deeply blue eyes and her _fantastic_ rack, grabbed his wrist and shoved it back down. She was barking orders. The beeping increased in frequency. _That would be a heartrate monitor, Shepard, you're familiar with those._

After that he tried to reach for the tubes down his throat, which were probably keeping him _breathing_ but fuck that, he wanted to talk. And probably ask where the hell he was, because he didn't _like_ not knowing where the hell he was. The woman glared at him and then lit up for a second with blue energy, and then he was locked in place, and he just _knew_ he was in a stasis field at that point. He fucking hated those.

He glared back at her, as well as he could in that state. She gave him a very bland look, still glowing, still holding him with biotics.

 _Two can play at that game, lady._ Half-sedated still and probably just a bit stupid, he summoned up own biotics into a barrier, and then _blew the barrier_. Wasn't something he normally did, but, stasis fields, man.

The sudden (and quite a bit more powerful than before, whoa, okay, how did he just do that) energy nova blasted both "Wilson" and "Miranda" back and away from him. That was all the opening he needed to start yanking out tubes and leads. Because yes, yes that _was_ the first instinct he had when faced with a strange operating room being presided over by people he didn't know doing _things_ he didn't know about and sure as balls didn't ask for.

Being half-sedated, though, he didn't really consider the consequences of what might happen if he started yanking out tubes and leads. So while he curled in on himself because it felt like his throat and his stomach were trying to turn inside-out, gagging and choking and coughing, it gave "Miranda" the time _she_ needed to jab him with another dose of sedative.

 _Well, fuck. So much for that_.

He was out like a light again a few seconds later.

\---

The next time Shepard came to, he was a little groggier, but his head was significantly less foggy, and he was in a helluva lot more pain. It was a deep kind of ache that he felt in his bones and his muscles and even his fucking _skin_. Like when he'd had surgery to fix his heart when he'd joined the Alliance - like when he'd had surgery _again_ to have the implants put in so he could control his distressingly unstable biotics - except _everywhere_. Every time he so much as shifted, something new twinged like it was pulling too tight, too taut.

And his head-- _fuck_ , his head. Felt like he'd headbutted a Krogan. Except he'd done that before and even _that_ hadn't made it feel like his skull was splitting open, back to front, pain stabbing from his amp port straight to a spot right between his eyes.

Day in the life of the LT, huh?

\--fuck, where was Kaidan anyway?

Wait. _Wait_.

Where was Joker? Tali, Garrus, Liara, Wrex - where the hell was his _crew_? Where the fuck was _Shepard_ , even? They'd been in orbit over Alchera when the _Normandy_ had come apart. Had the Alliance gotten the distress signal? Were his people okay?

What the shit.

There were alarms going off around him. He could smell smoke. Burning plastics and paint and metal. A voice was talking to him over the intercom - the woman from before? Miranda? He grimaced as he sat up, pressing a hand to his aching ribs through the scratchy synthetic fabric of a typical hospital getup.

Shit was on fire all around him, and all he could think about as he dragged his ass over to the locker that Miranda pointed out to him over the intercom? His _crew_.

His legs were unsteady. At first he thought of muscular atrophy - the kind he'd gotten once when he'd put off and cheesed PT for too long on Arcturus with the low gravity and heavy reliance on his biotics to get shit done - but he dismissed that when he found that it was more that they were hard to move, heavy, and pin-and-needly than actually aching from disuse.

 _That_. Was not muscular atrophy.

That was the weight and weirdness of cybernetics. Strengthening things but also inevitably adding mass.

 _...Kay. So it's not just my heart that's all Terminator now. Got it_.

Miranda yelled at him to put on the armor in the locker; he rolled his eyes, picked out what looked like a model of Prodigy amp (and hot _damn_ whoever was behind this place had to be well funded if they could spring for a Prodigy amp) and proceeded to plug it in first, a shiver racing down his spine at the little jolt of the amp connecting to his implants. Excellent. So those still worked.

Hey. Small victories, right? Besides, he was enjoying just how angry this Miranda chick was getting over the intercom as he took his sweet time to get out of the hospital clothes and into an actual pair of pants and a loose shirt.

\--Actually. No. Not the shirt. _Let her completely lose her shit._ He tossed it aside with a little snicker to himself as he finally took out a pistol and slid it into the back of his pants, unloaded and with the safety on because he wasn't _that_ much of an idiot.

"Shepard, what are you _doing_? Put on your armor, we haven't got time for this." she sputtered.

"Nnnnope. I think I won't, thanks."

" _Shepard!_ "

"It's cute that you expect me to take orders. Real cute."

"Shepard, there are mechs closing in on your position, _please_ , put some bloody armor on!"

Shepard grinned. Yeah, he could hear them down the hall. "Ooh. Sounds fun. See you on the other side of the mechs, babe." He spared a second towards searching for the nearest camera in view, and when he found it, he flipped it a double-bird, sticking out his tongue and grinning.

The angry incoherent sound of rage and disgust he got over the intercom worked wonders in terms of brightening his shitty day.

\---

"We're running low on thermal clips, but I'm a biotic, so just lemme know when you want me to hit 'em with the--"

Shepard gave Jacob a deadpan look, stood up from his spot behind cover, picked up one of the attacking mechs across the way in a biotic field, and smashed it into its fellow mechs in a delicious chorus of _system failure_ 's and _unknown critical e-e-errorr-r-r-r-r_ 's.

"...good stuff..." Jacob finished, blinking at him rapidly. Shepard dropped back behind the bit of bulletproof plexiglass he'd been using as cover, and gave Jacob a mildly inquisitive look.

"You were saying, Taylor?" he asked pointedly, smiling way, _way_ too pleasantly. He wondered if it was as effective a look for weirding people out as it had been before. Judging by the look Jacob was giving him, it was. _Nice. Still got it, Shepard._

Jacob Taylor was his newest "friend" on this weird hellhole of a station.

Which, by the way, he'd figured out was owned by Cerberus. Wasn't hard. That fucking doohickey symbol thing that vaguely resembled shit he'd doodle on his datapad in grade school if handed a stylus for five minutes? The yellow and black _everywhere_? Yeah. Not hard. He didn't trust any of these motherfuckers.

To some extent, he didn't trust himself, either, but, hey. So far he had yet to do anything that he would flag as being not-himself behavior, and there weren't any signs of like, voices, or visions or anything. And he'd done some quick mental exercises to see if anyone had put any neural blocks on anything, which it didn't _seem_ like they had - neural blocks and control chips were kinda obvious, they tended to act like how the Thorian brain plant thing's spores did - so he figured he was mostly okay.

Besides, if he couldn't trust himself, who _could_ he trust? Fucking nobody. Like usual. Relying on himself, like always.

It'd be nice to have some of his squad around, though. They could be counted on to rely on themselves, too. Kaidan, Tali, Garrus, Wrex, Liara, even Joker. Fuck. He'd trust Joker over _any_ of these sons of bitches.

"Didn't hear anything about you being a biotic," Jacob said. He sounded a little annoyed that he hadn't been able to impress anyone.

 _Aw_. "Biotic dick waving contests don't really fly with me, I'm afraid," Shepard said. He flashed Jacob a toothy grin, briefly, before falling into all-business mode.

He was not going to be jerked around by these bastards. No matter how friendly they seemed. He didn't trust any of them, or know any of them.

"So. Taylor. Where's my crew?"

Jacob got a little furrow in his brow, and his jaw shifted. He hesitated for a second, glanced around like someone who thought he might get in trouble. Then he explained.

And Shepard, well. Shepard might've flared a bit, in the process of having to catch himself to keep from falling over because his legs forgot for a second that they were supposed to be holding him up off the ground at least a _little_.

Yeah. He flared. The plexiglass cracked, a spiderweb pattern forming under his hand. Later, when he told people about it, he'd blame it on the new implants, the exhaustion, _everything_ but himself. And everyone he told about it would know that he was lying through his goddamn teeth.

" _Two fucking years_?"

He did _not_ squeak, though. Definitely did not.

...Okay. Maybe he did.

 _Shit_.

 


	3. swordbreaker

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The phrase of the day is apparently "thinly-veiled contempt".

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am enjoying this way too much. Many thanks to morphia@AO3 / morphia-writes@tumblr for being a fantastic beta once again, because when I write at 6 AM you just KNOW there's gonna be stupid.

First thing Shepard really saw Miranda do - after waking up properly, anyway, since the main things he remembered from before that were her voice and her tits - was shoot Wilson in the face.

"Miranda, I-I thought you were--" Wilson had started to say. Then, _bang_.

"Dead?" she finished for him.

Shooting people was not a thing that really bothered Shepard anymore. He'd done his share of it, he wasn't squeamish. But the _suddenness_ of it was jarring, causing him to jerk back and fire up his biotics.

"Whoa wait what the _shit?_ " he yelped. His barriers were up in an instant. "The fuck are you _doing_!"

Miranda looked at him sharply. "My job. Wilson was a traitor."

Shepard had figured as much, but-- "You dumbass, now we can't question him!"

"I don't think the man who refused to put on armor when I told him to has any right to talk," she said. She sounded so fucking arrogant, so uppity. He wanted to smack her.

He settled for snapping at her instead. "You think I'm gonna put on heavy armor from an unknown source without checking it for bugs or tampering? I trust my barriers _way_ more than I trust you people right now."

Jacob was putting away his gun, though. Shepard could see him doing it out of the corner of one eye, through the blue haze of the barrier.

So, for a second, Shepard redirected his focus towards Jacob. "And just what are _you_ doing?"

"Miranda sunk two years of her life into this project, Shepard. I don't think she's about to sabotage it now." But, hell. Jacob was Cerberus. _Both_ of them were Cerberus. That put them both in the club of The Road To Batshit Crazy Is Paved With Good Intentions right there.

Maybe he could at least trust that some of the intentions were good. _For now_. "All right," he conceded, letting his barriers down. Relaxing a little. He was enjoying the new amp, at least - hadn't burnt out yet - although he wasn't sure whether the power boost he'd been feeling was from that or what he was pretty sure had to be new implants. "But I still don't actually trust any of you fucking Cerberus types."

Miranda got a little twitch to her carefully schooled expression, but it was quickly masked with a sweet smile once again. "Ahh, Jacob. I should've known your conscience would get the better of you."

Jacob held up his hands. "Hey, don't look at me. He figured it out on his own."

She blinked. " _What_?"

Shepard's eyebrows rose. "Uh. Yeah? Kinda obvious with the symbol plastered all over everything. Hacked a couple laptops on the way up, too."

"But-- _how_? You're not even a tech specialist."

"Very bored nights in the mess with Tali and Alenko," he explained simply, smirking. Oh. _Hah!_ He'd surprised her. And not pleasantly, either. Fun. He could do more. " _Billions_ of credits? That right?"

To her credit, Miranda composed herself quickly. But it was that second of rapid blinking, pretty lips pressing together tightly, her shoulders tensing a little, that made Shepard grin. "The Illusive Man wouldn't settle for anything less than perfect restoration of all your faculties," she said, very evenly. Very _calmly_.

He was getting to her. And he loved that he was getting to her. People's buttons were so easy to push once you found them. "Nice. I'm gonna have to thank your Illusive Man."

He paused, for a second. Let Miranda think she had room to talk, let her open her mouth to do so.

"--After I've beaten his face in for Luna, for Rear Admiral Kahoku, for all those people killed by illegally shipped Rachni and Thorian creepers and husks, for the dead science teams, for the people that have been experimented on, and for the poor bastards who died in the Akuze incident."

She frowned very, very slightly. "Shepard--"

"Don't." He turned cold. Drew from that quiet anger that he'd been keeping on the backburner for the most part, keeping locked away as much as he could because being a soldier had taught him the consequences of poorly timed outbursts (and fighting Saren, even moreso).

If anyone had earned that anger, it was Cerberus. But he wasn't stupid. He knew Cerberus had to have brought him back for a reason, and he knew that reason had to be hella fucking important if people were trying to sabotage it.

"I'll talk to your boss. I'll hear what you have to say about _why_ you brought me back. But do not think for a single goddamn second that I am going to forgive you chucklefucks for anything or let you make excuses for anything you've done."

They'd brought him back. Just as he was. Which meant they were going to have to just fucking _deal_ with the kind of person he was.

"Now let's get off this damn station. I'm freezing my fucking nipples off."

"And whose fault is _that_?" Miranda said. He grinned.

Okay, so maybe he did like her just a _little_.

\---

The Illusive Man's holographic image was calmly puffing away at a cigarette. Shepard resisted the psychosomatic urge to cough, folded his arms and leveled an appraising look at the man who would like to be his boss.

"I hope you're not expecting me to apply the conventional wisdom of not looking the proverbial gift horse in the mouth," Shepard said.

"I'm not." The Illusive Man tapped his holographic cigarette against a holographic ashtray. "Humanity needs you, Shepard, but I don't expect you to take my word for it blindly. If you were that kind of person, you wouldn't be needed to begin with."

Right. Because everyone always needed _something_. "What makes you think I would help?"

"We're at war. Nobody wants to admit it, but humanity is under attack." The Illusive Man ( _God, that is the clunkiest fucking thing to call yourself_ , Shepard thought) said, all grim and dire. Like he gave a shit. _Nice act, man_.

"Rrriight. Okay, Tim--" and here, Shepard smiled far too sweetly, like he had at Jacob, like he had at the Council before, like he had at Ash just before he'd told her she could put her racial prejudices right up her ass, "I'm just gonna call you Tim, by the way, it's less likely to make part of my brain shrivel up and die in protest at your self-importance - forgive me if I'm wrong, but, you've yet to give me a single goddamn reason why I should believe you."

He did not miss the little nose-crinkle, the slight twist at the corner of those lips that made it look like the holographic man before him was trying very hard not to sneer. It brightened Shepard's mood to know that he could get under the bastard's skin; getting under peoples' skin was one of the ways a tiny, sickly biotic freak kid like him could always manage to get an edge over someone.

Hey, it wasn't like he'd survived in the street gangs of Chicago's south side by being an ass-kisser. Peoples' heads were like geodes; you didn't learn what was inside through coddling and petting, you learned it by taking a fucking hammer to the faults.

So far, the Illusive Man's geode-head seemed to be filled with what could charitably be described as _self-absorbed wankery._ "Then I will be more direct. The Council refuses to see it, but you and I both know what the real threat is."

And Shepard turned a little more serious there, because there were loaded questions and then there were questions with loaded answers. The answer to that statement had gotten Shepard declared insane by a few people. "Not sure what _you_ think it is, but the answer I'm coming up with is the Reapers."

"Exactly. Good to see your memory's still intact, Shepard."

 _That shit isn't something you forget_. "This is still sketchy as fuck, Timmy. For all I know you've just read a few of the more colorful reports on me in the hopes of trying to find the right button to push."

"As I've said, I'm not expecting you to take my word for it. A colony in the Traverse - Freedom's Progress - just went dark. There, you should find the proof you need."

"So now you're giving me _orders_?"

"I'm giving you direction. What you do with it is up to you." But the way he said it implied that he knew he had Shepard hooked.

And Shepard would be lying to himself if he said he _wasn't_ some combination of worried, curious, and intrigued.

 _Fuck_.

"But first, go to Freedom's Progress. See things for yourself." The Illusive Man's tone was one of a man who knew he'd won, and Shepard resented it. "Take Miranda and Jacob with you."

He didn't trust either of them. But he was at least pretty sure neither would shoot him in the back. "If this is the _least_ bit hinky, I am fucking _out_."

"Fair enough."

It worried him that the Illusive Man agreed so readily.

\---

 _This place is a goddamn ghost town_ , Shepard thought, five minutes on the ground at the colony and already unnerved as all hell.

There wasn't a soul around. Meals had been abandoned halfway through; vidscreens had been left on, and terminals were still active and logged in. It reminded him of old vids he'd seen, documentaries mostly, that showed glimpses of the centuries-old Chernobyl disaster. Except he was _there_ this time, in the aftermath. No radiation, no gases, no corpses, and not a sound in the place except the ones he, Miranda, and Jacob were making.

Until the mechs showed up, at least.

It was stupid just how easy it was to fall back into the rhythm of combat, the flow of a fight. Jacob and Miranda were both better shots than he was, and with TIM not being kind enough to provide him with a shotgun, he pretty much fell entirely on his biotics.

Singularity, then warp, then watch things get shredded by the ensuing blast (yeah, he knew it wasn't technically a "singularity", but that's what they'd called it during training because the Asari word didn't translate right, so anyone who wanted to argue semantics could fuck right off). Then a lift, then another warp to rip through the next mech's key systems, then charging up his fist with dark energy and reinforcing his barriers to punch through the fenris mech that had survived Miranda's tech attack.

If he didn't think too hard about it, he could almost imagine he had Wrex and Kaidan with him, all their tech and biotics and raw combat ability and _shotguns_ cutting through Geth like they were tissue paper, on some backwater world with a scrappy, prefab-tastic colony that had been overrun by the fuckers.

Heh. I wish.

It'd been a day, for him. It'd been two years for them. They had probably given up on missing him and moved on.

"--we're not alone here." Miranda's voice cut through his thoughts and put him back in the present. Colony, people disappearing, angry mechs that were probably hacked. Right.

He nodded to show that he'd heard, that he understood, but his reply was as much on autopilot as his legs were. His words taking him from A to B, just like his feet did. "Maybe we can get some answers," he said. Because he wasn't thinking about clever quips right then. He was thinking about late nights in the mess, when the prospect of dreaming of a dead race was enough to make another cup of coffee more appealing than sleep.

Quoting lit with Ash. Talking about biotics and BaAT and training and implants with Kaidan. Listening to Tali talk about her people and the homeworld she'd like to see someday. Trading witticisms with Joker as only two self-deprecating disabled people can. Giving Garrus a hard time about being a cop, and finding common ground on a disregard for bad rules giving the edge to bad people. Discussing merc work and the genophage with Wrex. Learning about the Protheans from starry-eyed Liara.

 _Days for me. Years for them._ He had to keep reminding himself of that; his head was a lot quicker to catch on to ideas than his emotions were.

What he found in the next little prefab building they walked into made his thoughts grind to a halt.

"Shepard?"

His mouth went dry. He knew the voice. Some people would say that Quarians were hard to tell apart with the suits and masks, but there was one in the little group of about a half-dozen he was faced with that he would _never_ have trouble identifying, wrapped up in embroidered purple cloth over the top of her fitted enviro-suit.

"Tali?"

One of the other Quarians started to protest, but Tali turned quickly to snap at him, before fixing her gaze back on Shepard. "Is it-- is that really _you_?" she asked. Hope filtering through the confusion.

He smiled. _Yeah. I thought I was dead, too_. He didn't blame her for needing proof. He wouldn't really believe himself, either. "Keelah sel'ai," he said, and he didn't fucking care if his voice was wavering because that was fine, this was Tali. It was okay if people saw him get emotional about someone who had earned it. "By the homeworld I hope to see someday, right? Did your pilgrimage go okay?"

"Yes, it-- it did." There was relief in her posture, some of the tension leaving her shoulders. "Oh, Shepard. We thought you were dead."

"I _was_ dead. Cerberus put me back together."

And he'd make a joke about it but, _shit_ , this was Tali. She needed the truth from him. Deserved it.

So he told her everything he knew. Everything he'd learned from hacked datapads and laptops left unsecured and open networks, along with everything Miranda and Jacob and the Illusive Man had clued him in on.

It wasn't diplomacy, or playing nice. It was trust, something that Tali had earned and Cerberus had not. And if anyone from Cerberus didn't like it, they could take their opinions and shove them up their asses.

 


	4. ship of fools

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What is with all of the hugging? No wonder his nickname is "Teddy".

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The great thing about naming these chapters after tracks by my favorite prolific modern composer is that I'm probably never going to run out.

As they were preparing to leave Freedom's Progress, Shepard gave Tali a hug in parting. "Sure you can't come with?" he asked her.

"No, my mission right now is too important," she said sadly. "But, um. Maybe when I'm finished, I can come with you?"

"Anything I can help with?" He pulled back to look at her with a slight frown.

"I'm sorry. I can't tell you with Cerberus listening in, but..." She ducked her head. "It's in Geth space. That should tell you how important it is."

He smiled and patted her on the shoulder. "Alright." He understood. He wouldn't want to give Cerberus any more ideas in regards to the flotilla, either. _Fuckers_. "Keep in touch, okay? I'm being monitored, but uh. Anything you can say over unsecured channels..."

"I'll try," she told him. And he believed her. "And, Shepard? Be careful."

Shepard grinned back at her. "Hey. I'm always careful."

She laughed, a sound that sort of warbled through the filters in her suit. It was good to hear. Lifted his spirits considerably in the wake of what they'd found on that damn colony.

 _Collectors_. A myth, except not, because there they'd been. Right there on the screens in their eerie insectoid forms. Shepard took one last glance at the footage on those screens, in that tiny security room in the back of one of the prefab buildings. _They find you. Freeze you. And then they take you away._ How did you even fight something like that?

He wasn't smiling on the way back to the shuttle; seeing Tali could only do so much. He was _thinking_ , however, trying to come up with a plan. Planning was something he was good at, always had been.

By the time he got to the station and back into another meeting with the Illusive Man, he'd even discarded the idea of being contrary for the hell of it. This was a problem that needed fixing, and he knew that the Alliance wouldn't do a damn thing this far out into the Terminus Systems. _They never fucking do, unless it's something that can look good on recruitment posters._

Everything he'd ever done to save people, he'd done because other people weren't doing _shit_. Elysium. Saren. Sovereign. He did things because he saw problems that no one else was fixing, fights that no one else was winning. He didn't like seeing something going wrong and doing nothing about it. It was almost a compulsion. He wasn't good. He wasn't nice. He sure as hell wasn't a hero.

And he was okay with that. Which was why, in that meeting, he agreed to work with Cerberus.

They were the only ones fucking _doing_ anything.

\---

"Hey Commander. Just like old times, huh?"

Shepard turned around, blinking. He couldn't help grinning at what he saw. _Joker!_

The pilot grinned back. That was all the prompting Shepard needed to break into a run and nearly tackle the man in a hug, letting out a giddy laugh as he did. Joker grunted and stiffened in the embrace.

"Ow. Ribs. _Careful._ " the pilot sputtered.

Ack. "Shit, right, sorry." Shepard let go. Mostly. He still had his hands on the pilot's upper arms in case Joker needed steadying. But he was still grinning and, luckily, Joker wasn't holding himself like anything was broken. "You're on your feet!"

"Yeah, man, Cerberus fixed me up. Well, sorta, I mean. They can't fix the Vrolik's, but they can at least fix up my legs a little so I don't need the crutches all the time." Joker smirked. "Drop in the bucket compared to what it cost to fix you up though. _God_."

"Hah. I bet." Shepard patted the pilot's arm, but he was more gentle about it. Joker had pretty much been one of his best friends on the old _Normandy_. "Mostly-unprotected atmospheric drop after exposure to vacuum conditions? I probably looked like a meat smoothie."

Joker cringed. "Bad mental image, boss."

"Pppffff." Yeah, right. Neither of them was squeamish. "Whatever, I'm a Terminator-zombie and you're less of a cripple. I'd say that's an improvement over both our previous situations."

"I'm actually a little weirded out. Were you always shorter than me?"

"Joker, I'm shorter than everybody."

"Shorter than like, Kaidan, yeah. But me? _Really?_ Repeatedly breaking your everything tends to lose you a couple inches."

" _Everybody_. Except the Volus." Most humans, anyway. He didn't even break a hundred sixty centimeters. Technically not a midget, and definitely not afflicted with dwarfism, but. _Yeah_. He wasn't the towering figure people thought he'd be, not by a long shot.

"Cerberus didn't think you'd be alright with being a little taller?"

"Perfect recreation, they said." Which was sad in a few ways. He really _wouldn't_ have minded being taller. Or having a bigger dick. That'd earn no complaints. "I think they replaced my implants, though. My output's been crazy. I tried to pick up a stylus and snapped it in half."

"Gonna assume you're talking about your biotics there, 'cause to me it still looks like _you_ might snap in half."

"I'm _so_ glad my scrawny-ass stature is amusing to you, Joker."

"Gotta take my laughs where I can get 'em, Commander."

Shepard's smile faded a little. _Commander_. People kept calling him that. They weren't in the Alliance anymore. Tali had called him Shepard. That was okay. _Close enough_. But, shit, Joker was like a brother. One of his most trusted friends, calling him by his old designation that he wasn't sure he would get to keep anymore. He knew it was out of respect, but even in his own estimation, consenting to working with Cerberus was pretty damn high on the list of things he wasn't sure he could call worthy of it.

"You can call me by name, y'know. It's okay."

Joker's grin faltered, too. "Ah. Right." The pilot dropped his gaze, shrugging his shoulders lightly. "Sorry, just-- old habit, y'know?"

Shepard understood completely. But Joker wasn't Flight Lieutenant Jeff Moreau any more than Shepard was Commander Theodore Shepard. "Cerberus yellow and black instead of Alliance blues, Joker," he reminded him. "We're basically civilians now."

Still not looking at Shepard directly, Joker nodded. "So, does this mean I can call you 'Teddy' or something?" he asked, a little tentative and unsure.

That made Shepard laugh. "Sure. Why not." Now both of them would be calling each other by dumbass nicknames from their training days. It fit.

"'Kay. Cool. Teddy it is, then." Joker seemed to cheer up then, finally lifting his head up and giving Shepard a wry grin. "Hey. You wanna see something amazing?"

"Depends on your definition of amazing. If it's hanar-on-krogan porn, I'm stealing your hat and putting it in the nearest trash compactor."

The grin widened. "C'mon. You're gonna _love_ this."

Joker limped his way down the corridor, and Shepard followed. When Joker stopped in front of a window, so did Shepard.

Through the window, was another ghost. Another thing brought back from the dead. The last time he'd seen her, she was adrift in space over Alchera, torn to shreds by an unknown cruiser's particle acceleration cannons. He put his hand on the window, like he was reaching out to touch it.

His ship.

 _I'm home_ , he thought.

"Pretty sweet, huh?" Joker asked. Shepard wasn't looking, but the pilot's grin was obvious from his tone.

And Shepard smiled, in the kind of way that did nothing to hide that he felt like he might start tearing up. "Yeah," he answered.

Joker tapped the plexiglass, indicating the ship's hull. "They haven't given her a name yet."

 _We'll have to fix that, won't we_.

The _Normandy SR2_ shipped out a few hours later.

\---

Shepard wasn't sure what to do with having his own big, roomy cabin. The ship's AI, apparently called EDI by the crew - and it was weird as fuck to have an AI on board, let alone one programmed by Cerberus, so he wasn't sure that he fully trusted it yet - told him that the space his cabin occupied was often called the Loft, because it was nearest to the top of the ship and it was where the hull was thinnest.

Made sense in a few ways. You wanted the hull to be thicker near the bottom of the ship so she didn't burn up when she hit the atmosphere of a planet, and there really weren't any vulnerable or important systems housed in the captain's quarters that needed extra shielding. During a dogfight, his place would be in the CIC anyway.

But that wasn't the trippiest thing about it, because it wasn't until he got to the on-suite bathroom and started stripping his armor off for his first shower since he'd been revived that he realized he hadn't _once_ looked in a mirror. Not since _before_.

And, well, _shit_. He really did look like a cross between the Terminator and a zombie, huh?

White hair didn't bother him. He'd always had white hair. He'd tried to dye it out sometime after he got his N7 stripes, but it never quite stuck, so he stopped bothering around the time that he was assigned to the first _Normandy_ ; he wasn't surprised that Cerberus hadn't seen fit to bother with it, either. And, yeah, he'd always been pale. There were a lot of words people used to describe that, but he'd never felt like they did justice to the absolute lack of pigmentation he had going on.

Even his eyes were a sort of grey color, and not even the kind of kickass stormy grey-green that you'd read about cool enigmatic heroes in books having. Just kinda _there._ Like taking a picture of what normal people eyes looked like and dialing the color saturation wayyyy down, then turning the brightness up and the contrast down. Maybe in the right light they'd look kinda blue, but, nah. They just looked dull to him.

In short, he'd never really considered himself to be attractive to begin with. Striking, sure, but not really objectively good-looking by any definition. Just kinda weird. Unnerving. Before, he'd look in the mirror and see the tired eyes of a sickly kid staring back at him, with a blotchy complexion, pale lips, and a permanent knot between thin brows. All that was still true.

But his old scars? _Gone_. Completely. He'd had some before down the left side of his face from getting in too close to some asshole from a rival gang with an energy whip, and a few more on his arms from some upgrades he'd had done a while back to help him better channel his biotics. He'd also had some surgical scarring on his chest, before, neat little lines from where they'd cut him open and put his heart back together and sewed him back up, like fixing up a stuffed animal that a varren had gotten hold of.

There wasn't a trace of any of them. He was a little annoyed by that when he saw it. Scars told a story. They implied that he'd lived. He could show them off or brag about them.

He couldn't do that with the geometric patterns drawn on his skin in their place, though. Those were just fucking _freaky_. Little lines of split skin with a faint orange glow showing from underneath, crisscrossing seemingly at random intervals, but always at unnaturally straight angles.

He found himself running his fingers over some of them as he stared at himself in the mirror. They didn't hurt. More like they just sort of twinged a little. He still had feeling in them, or at least in the fake skin around them. And the fake skin had pores, too, and even the faint scratch of his particular sort of sparse colorless stubble.

 _I wonder if I still sweat. Or get zits. Blackheads?_ It was all so fucking unreal. He had to laugh to himself when he was reminded of a quote from a vid; _he's more machine now than man, twisted and evil_. And wasn't he just?

 _Do not give yourselves to these unnatural men, machine men, with machine minds and machine hearts,_ went another quote, from something older still.

He stood back from the mirror with a faint, ironic smirk. _Yeah. I wouldn't give myself to me right now, either_. But someone had to do something. _Someone_ had to stand up. Might as well be him, even if no one followed him when he did.

What's the worst that could happen, really? He'd already died once. He wasn't afraid. He'd take these Collector bastards on whether the galaxy approved of it or not.

He was ready for anything. He had nothing left to lose. _Come at me, you bug-looking motherfuckers_.

 


	5. preparation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Meeting new friends while searching for old ones.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's a fun game, we'll call it "spot the foreshadowing". 
> 
> I never realized Kasumi would be so much fun to write. Beta by morphia-writes@tumblr as always.

Miranda advised Shepard to go find Mordin Solus first. He didn't.

He hit the Citadel first.

"I need to make sure that we can get past C-Sec in this Cerberus boat of yours," he told her when she protested. "And I need to make sure my Spectre status is recognized. The Terminus systems might not be Council space, but being an active Spectre along with being a dead Alliance legend will carry more weight than just being a dead Alliance legend would."

She went stiff for a moment in a way that told Shepard she wasn't happy with not having control over the situation. "Understood, Commander," she said primly with a curt nod, before turning and leaving. Jacob saluted and left as well, leaving Shepard to his thoughts in the new ship's CIC.

Those weren't the only reasons he was going to the Citadel, of course. There were things he wanted to stock up on before he went too far afield - dextro supplies just in case, spare biotic amps in case anyone blew one out, things for Gardner to cook with so that the crew didn't have to resign themselves to eating fillet of fried boot leather with with nutrient paste au gratin - but there were also people he needed to talk to. Anderson, for one.

Garrus was MIA, Wrex was on Tuchanka, Liara worked for the Shadow Broker, and Tali was on a mission of her own. Aside from Garrus, that mainly left Kaidan unaccounted for, and Anderson would know where he was. Now, whether or not Anderson would tell _Shepard_ where the man was? _That_ was an unknown. But for Shepard, it'd be enough to just know that Kaidan was okay.

Miranda didn't need to know about that. She had her little stack of dossiers that she wanted to shove at him, and she was determined to get him to look at them. Hopefully at least looking into the one that was on the Citadel would placate her, otherwise he was probably just going to have to get used to the idea of being nagged all the way back to Omega.

Or worse, she'd do that passive-aggressive No You're The Commander, It's Your Business How We Proceed thing. He _hated_ that. At least Ash had been up-front about her misgivings, and he'd been able to tell her where it would be appropriate to shove them.

_God, Miranda is actually making me miss Ash's racism. This is fucking trippy_.

Shepard sighed and wandered his way up to the cockpit. Maybe Joker would be able to improve his mood.

And Joker being, well, Joker, the man did not disappoint. "Can you _believe_ this, Teddy? It's like my baby, but better than new! It fits me like a _glove_ ," Joker said excitedly as he turned his chair to face Shepard. He was practically bouncing in the seat. "And _leather seats!_ The Alliance may have better hardware but they could care less if the seats breathe. Civilian sector comfort by design."

"Couldn't," Shepard corrected with a faint smirk.

Joker blinked. "Huh?"

"Couldn't care less."

"What-- oh, pff, whatever. You know what I meant and I know what I meant."

"It's _tacky_ , Joker. You're smarter than that."

Joker pouted and blew a raspberry. " _Ppptthhbbbth_. Not representing the Alliance anymore, am I? I can act as dumb as I wanna."

"Doesn't mean I won't bug you about it." Shepard cricked his neck and stretched, then walked over to go lean against the console to the right of the pilot's chair; Joker turned his chair accordingly. "So. Think the Council will see us?"

Joker shrugged. "Ehh, s'not like they haven't blown us off before. If they do, want me to call 'em up just to hang up on 'em, for old times' sake?"

"Hah! Sure, why not. Gotta get our kicks somehow." Shepard closed his eyes, listening to the faint engine noise and the hum of electronics around him. The SR2 had a different sound from the original _Normandy_ ; he hadn't quite gotten used to her yet. But she still managed to run just as quiet overall as her predecessor. Most ships he'd served on before, he could barely hear himself think if he went down to engineering. On both iterations of the _Normandy_ , he could actually hold a conversation down there if he wanted to.

Maybe it was because the Turians had helped to build her, originally. He didn't think there were any other Alliance ships that managed to run quite as quietly.

"Somethin' on your mind, Ted?" Joker asked after a while, pulling him from his thoughts.

Shepard blinked a bit. "What? No, not really." He didn't think mental comparisons between the two ships were really a big enough thing to talk about.

"Okay, 'cuz usually you don't like, y'know, come up here much. Or at least you didn't before, anyways." Joker averted his eyes with a little dismissive shrug. "If it's nothin' though, then I guess... yeah, okay, whatever."

"What, I can't just come up to hang out?"

"Well, usually you don't, so..." Joker shrugged again.

Didn't he? "We hung out all the time, though."

"Not really? I mean, unless you count the times we'd run into each other in the medbay 'cuz you were in for somethin', and I was in for somethin' else."

"You don't think that counts?"

"No, those are doctor visits. It's not hanging out to go to the doctor for a hairline fracture, and talk to someone else who's there for like, I dunno, immunosuppressants, or whatever the hell it was you were on 'cause you were on _all_ the weird shit that can't be pronounced."

"Dipyridamole is pretty hard to pronounce, yeah."

"Not that one in particular, just all the other ones. Like, ones that are harder to say than hydrocodone paracetamol."

"Please don't fly the ship while high off your tits on hydrocodone."

"C'mooonnn, have a little faith, Teddy."

"In your abilities, yeah, but your self-restraint? You watch porn on the bridge."

"Are you _ever_ gonna drop that? Besides, I'm usually only on the weaker shit along with some horse-pill vitamin thing that Chakwas makes me take. I think it's about ninety percent calcium supplement and ten percent everything else."

"No, I'm never gonna drop it, and no, I still don't have _any_ faith in your ability to restrain yourself. Frankly, I'm amazed you're wearing _pants_."

"Hey. Leather's comfy and all, but you start sweating and it like, sticks to you n'stuff. _Blugh_."

"It worries me that you know shit like that."

"I'll have you know that I am _shocked_ and _offended_ at the implications of that statement, Shepard."

"What, that you decided to enjoy the comfort of the leather-upholstered pilot's seat while bare-ass naked?"

"I was wearing skivvies, y'fuckin' weirdo. --Crap. I just admitted my guilt, didn't I?"

"Don't worry, Joker, it's only me and the creepy Big Brother Is Watching omniscient Cerberus AI who heard you."

"Fuck you too, Ted."

"Only if you spontaneously grew tits and turned blue."

"I hate you so much."

\---

Shepard _liked_ Kasumi Goto. For one thing, she was his height. For another, she was refreshingly honest.

He asked her what Cerberus had agreed to do for her in exchange for her service - aside from paying her an impressive sum - and she'd told him. No dancing around it, no lying to him to try and coerce him into doing what she wanted him to do. Her lover had died after getting in over his head with some sensitive intel, and she wanted to steal his greybox back from the person who killed him. Simple enough.

What was trippy was how easy it was for Shepard to trust her. It had been a long-ass time since he'd felt like he could trust someone right away like that. Probably dangerous considering she was a _thief_ , but at that point he was broke, anyway; the only shit she could steal effectively belonged to Cerberus, or people who weren't him. He didn't really own anything (not even his body, anymore, and wasn't _that_ fucked up), and even if he had, most things he tended to own and be possessive of had sentimental value rather than intrinsic value, so there'd be no incentive to steal them.

So before she could turn to board the ship, he asked her to come with him for his little Citadel shopping trip.

He didn't like being alone on the Citadel because it could lead to getting ambushed in dark alleys in the Wards, but he didn't want to bring any Cerberus flunkies with him, either. Bringing Kasumi would effectively nullify both concerns. Plus, if Anderson didn't give him the intel he wanted, he could just have Kasumi steal it, right? Sure, stealing from the Alliance and the Council kind of irked him a bit, but on the list of questionable shit he'd done, it ranked pretty fucking low.

And he kinda wanted to get to know her. He could use another friend on the new _Normandy_.

That was how he came to be walking the length of the Presidium with Kasumi Goto - the best thief in the galaxy - at his side, as he bought supplies specifically for planned non-human crew members with a Cerberus credit chit. It was a little act of quiet rebellion on his part, and a good way to cool down after having punched a reporter in the face and having loudly accused a Rosenkov Materials representative of discriminating against poor people.

Hey, it had gotten him a discount. And as far as the reporter went, it wasn't the first time he'd clocked that Khalisah woman in the jaw. He'd even waved at the camera afterward. If that wasn't a good way to tell the galaxy that he was back, he didn't know what else could be.

On their way back to the wards, he and Kasumi stopped at a noodle shop for lunch. He paid for it on the same Cerberus credit chit he'd been using for everything else, and smirked as he saw his little "interview" on one of the public viewscreens that the Citadel seemed to have everywhere.

" _Irrashaimase!_ " the noodle chef called out cheerfully at a passerby, sliding two steaming hot bowls of ramen to the once-dead Spectre and the pretty thief. Both of them exchanged a look as they accepted their bowls.

"Is it just me, or his pronunciation so bad that the translator didn't pick it up?" Shepard asked conversationally.

Kasumi snickered. "Someone who tries to pass ramen off as a delicacy probably isn't too well versed in Japanese culture," she replied, gesturing to the distracted chef with one chopstick. "Either that or he _does_ , and he's just trying to profit off of the bits around the edges that most people have at least vaguely heard of but have no real idea about. Besides, he isn't even wearing the right clothes."

"There's a word for that, right? _Gaijin_ or something?"

"And here you were accusing _him_ of mangling the language. I'm disappointed in you, Shep."

"Hah. You'd hate it back home then. Kids in the gangs came from all kinds of backgrounds and brought the languages from home with them. You could pick up a little of everything while still knowing jack shit about any one language in particular. Chicago was one helluva melting pot."

"Chi-town, huh?" Kasumi scooped up a bit of ramen with her chopsticks - far more elegantly and efficiently than Shepard was doing, but like _hell_ he was gonna ask for sensible utensils - and eyed him from under her hood with a little smirk. "Know any mobsters?"

"I dunno, Tokyo-girl," he countered. "You know any yakuza?"

"You know, I think my grandma might've, but I never asked." She took a thoughtful bite of her ramen, chewing and swallowing before speaking again. "So," she began. "What is it that you didn't want Cerberus to be in on, hm?"

Ah. She'd figured that out, huh? Not that it was hard. He tried to pick up some ramen with his own chopsticks like she was doing, but failed sort of miserably. "There's an old friend I need to talk to on the Council," he told her. 'Cause he trusted her, and that shit needed to go both ways if this was gonna work. "David Anderson. I need to get my Spectre status back before I hit the Terminus systems, and that's how I'm gonna have to do it."

But that wasn't all of it, and she seemed to realize that, peering curiously at him. "And?"

"--and. I kinda need to look into the whereabouts of my old crew." Mostly Alenko. Anderson still had the connections to know where he was.

"Ah. Right, the whole 'being dead' thing." Shepard could swear that he saw her raise an eyebrow under that hood of hers. "And you don't want Cerberus knowing about this, because...?"

What did he have to lose by saying it to Kasumi? She didn't seem to have any particular attachment to Cerberus so far. "Because they'd try to use that knowledge to manipulate me even more than they already have," he admitted, and maybe his voice wavered a little when he did but fuck if he didn't need to tell _somebody_. Maybe he was paranoid, but seeing Tali on Freedom's Progress couldn't have been a coincidence. The galaxy just wasn't that fucking small. And having Joker, even _Chakwas_ on the new _Normandy_? That _had_ to be some kind of ploy.

Throw in mentions of the Reapers, and it all became the perfect little bullshit cocktail for them to feed him so he'd be on their side. Cerberus was playing him like a fucking harp, and he knew it, and he _hated_ that he knew it because it pissed him off even worse when he also knew that he couldn't do a damn thing about it with the Collectors still being a thing.

Even after he'd fucking _died_ , the Prothean beacon's message - the haunting words of Vigil, and those apocalyptic logs on Ilos, and speaking directly to Sovereign itself - still lingered at the back of his mind, tugging at his awareness during his waking hours and assaulting him in his dreams as he slept. The Reapers were _real_. He could get it if no one believed him. He didn't even think he'd believe it himself if he hadn't seen it. But if the Collectors were working for them, he had to stop them.

"You're afraid," she said. She wasn't passing judgment, or trying to be sympathetic; it was a matter-of-fact statement.

And she was _right_. "Yeah." He _was_ fucking afraid. Not of the Collectors, but of their potential masters. The very _threat_ of which could get him, the great Commander Theodore Shepard, first human Spectre, hero of the Skyllian Blitz, working with a terrorist pro-human splinter group out of desperation.

Kasumi nodded slowly, showing her understanding without comment. She seemed to ponder the situation as she ate her noodles, and things went quiet for a while between them. When she spoke again, it was casual. "Then I guess the next question becomes, why did you want _me_ along?"

"It's still something I need to know. If I don't know what's going on - if I don't know where they are - then I can't plan around it and make sure they're safe." As many of them as he could plan around, anyway. As many as Anderson had info on.

"Ahhh, you don't know if your old friend Anderson will tell you, so you've brought the thief with you to get the intel whether he gives it to you or not."

Shepard grinned. "I knew I liked you for a reason. You can take anything that won't get you charged with treason or threaten galactic security, I swear."

"Keep appealing to a girl's kleptomania like that and the feeling might just end up mutual," she purred, before turning her chair to face him. "Now, let's see if I can't teach you how to use chopsticks before you poke someone's eye out."

\---

Standing outside the Embassies on the Presidium, Shepard figured that it was probably a good thing he'd punched that reporter earlier, because if he'd had her in front of him right then, he probably would have snapped her neck instead.

"Those blind, arrogant _bastards_ ," he muttered, leaning heavily against the railing that kept onlookers from falling into the artificial lake.

Kasumi materialized beside him, resting an elbow on the railing herself and giving him an inquisitive look. She'd been cloaked the entire time that she'd been in there with him, silently observing the exchange between him and Anderson. "I'm not sure what you were expecting, but I'm assuming it wasn't _that_."

"I didn't just let the old council die because I'm some fucking ignorant xenophobe, Kasumi!" he snapped. "It was a tactical fucking decision to hold the fleets back; the Destiny Ascension was just _one ship_ , and if I'd sent the Alliance fleets in after it then they would've been cut to fucking _ribbons_!"

"Hey, no need to get angry at _me_. I'm not one of the ones who refused to see you."

"Yeah. I know. Look, it's not you. I'm sorry, okay? I just-- _agh_." He sighed angrily and ran a hand quickly through his hair, fighting back his temper before his biotics had the chance to do more than spark a little. "Motherfucker. And now they know I'm with Cerberus, so it looks even _worse_ for humanity as a whole in the court of galactic public opinion. Of fucking _course_."

"At least you got your Spectre status back. That'll help."

"Barely. I'm not sure what good it'll do when most of what I'll be doing will be out in the Terminus systems anyway. It's not even Council space. They don't give a rat's ass about whether or not I'm a Spectre."

"Oh, I'm sure it'll manage to do you _some_ good. You've got some pull now, right?"

"Yeah, maybe. But I don't even wanna _think_ about what it'll do to Anderson's reputation for him to be throwing his lot in with a dead Spectre who's working with a pro-human splinter group. Worst case scenario, he gets kicked off the council, and I get branded as a rogue agent and hunted down like Saren."

Kasumi tutted and patted him on the shoulder. "I think you're being way too negative about this, Shep. It could've gone worse, after all. Anderson could've refused to see you too."

He only snorted in reply, shaking his head. Would that have been worse, at that point? Really?

"So!" she said, pulling back so she could clap her hands together. "Who's this Staff Commander Kaidan Alenko, hm?"

Shepard's gaze fell back on her, and he quirked an eyebrow. "Changing the subject, huh?"

"You look like you could use it, and I, for one, am curious." She gave him an almost feline smile.

Well. She'd find out anyway through her snooping. "Old friend from back on the other _Normandy_ ," he told her. "A good friend. Somebody I trusted, and respected. Also the only other human biotic on board at the time."

"You called him 'Staff Lieutenant' when you asked about him. A promotion, I'm guessing?"

"Heh. Yeah. If anybody deserved one after all that bullshit with Saren, it's him. I think there were times where he was tempted to beat me over the head with a rulebook, when it came to some of the shit we used to pull." Shepard smiled at the memory. He and Alenko had always disagreed on methods, even if they usually agreed on what the results should be.

"Sounds like you really liked the guy, huh?" Kasumi smirked and nudged him with her elbow.

"I thought he was pretty cool. Needed to loosen up, but he wasn't bad."

She appeared satisfied by that answer. She also looked like she'd figured out something that he hadn't. "Mmmhm. And is he going to be the one I'm looking into finding for you?"

Shepard wasn't sure he trusted that look on her, frankly. "Well, yeah, but why the cat-that-caught-the-canary expression?"

"Oh, no reason." She smiled sweetly at him, stepping back from the railing and stretching. "It's getting late. Should we start heading back to your ship?"

It'd probably be best if they did that _before_ Cerberus decided to track him down and drag him back on board, but at the same time, he was still feeling a little rebellious. "Dunno, think they've got your stuff loaded on board by now?"

"I certainly hope so! I went to a lot of trouble to get some of it."

"Well, if they damaged anything I'll get ol' Timmy to pay you extra. Sound good?"

"Sweet talker."


	6. confidence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Is it paranoia if everyone's out to get you?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had planned to post this tomorrow, but JJ is an enabler and encouraged early posting.
> 
> Much love to morphia-writes@tumblr as always for being a patient beta, and also to both oncelovedyou@tumblr and jupiterjames@tumblr / Jupiter_james@AO3 for being wonderful and encouraging.

Chakwas got her brandy, the Cerberus mess sergeant got his supplies, and overall, Shepard was feeling just a bit more positive about this whole suicide mission business by the time they hit Omega. Seeing Miranda get annoyed with him for the delays helped, too; little did more to lift his spirits than watching Miss Genetically Perfect quietly fuming behind her desk while trying to maintain her cheerful mask.

His day improved even further when he met Zaeed Massani at the docks. A tall, scarred, grizzled merc, with a voice like a jammed trash compactor, Zaeed looked like the kind of guy who didn't take shit from anyone, and when he had something he needed to do, Shepard figured that the old merc would be the type to get results, no matter the odds.

It also made a good impression that Zaeed had some faded tattoos displayed proudly on his person. Maybe to most people it wouldn't mean much, but Shepard knew the Blue Suns' emblem when he saw it. He'd certainly had to shoot enough of them.

If they were going to be picking up a Turian, then it'd probably be better to have the merc whose organization was partly Turian with them, than it would be to have the jumpy-ass Cerberus chick with control issues. And if Miranda didn't _like_ that, she could shove her disapproval up her perky little ass.

Not that he said any of that out loud. Explaining his reasoning to the self-appointed Cerberus XO would make her reaction _way_ less entertaining. He even grinned at her while Zaeed dragged an unconscious, kneecapped Batarian through the airlock behind him.

"You're going onto Omega to get Archangel and Mordin Solus _alone_?" she said incredulously. Joker hid a snicker behind his hand from the pilot's seat.

"Oh, sure. It'll be a nice little stroll over to Afterlife, all sunshine and rainbows and horrible death under a rain of high-velocity assault rifle slugs." Shepard grinned. "I'll be fine. I'm taking Kasumi with me. And Massani, if he's up for it."

Zaeed grunted. "Got nothin' better t'do after I get this useless goddamn sack'a meat sealed away for pickup," he said, gesturing to the bloodied Batarian he was dragging along by its feet.

Miranda was quietly furious. "You can't just completely disregard your own safety like this, Shepard."

"I'm not. Kasumi is a tech expert, Massani seems to have munitions and heavy ordnance covered, and I've got the biotics and the field medicine covered." Shepard's smile fell away, in favor of giving the woman a much colder look. "In the Alliance, we'd call you a Sentinel, Miranda. Jacob's what we'd call a Vanguard. Except you don't have tech armor, and Jacob can't charge."

"Both Jacob and I are biotics, Shepard. We can handle ourselves."

"Not complementary biotics. You're barely trained, and Jacob doesn't have the output." Neither of them was Alenko, or Liara, or Wrex. "I get that you want to protect your investment, but you revived _me_. Which means you get _me_. If you don't like it when I call the shots, then you can kiss my ass."

Miranda's mouth twitched, and Shepard fought the urge to laugh. Watching her fraying at the edges would never stop being funny to him. "Understood, _Commander_ ," she said, a certain tension to her posture.

"Alright then." Standing at parade rest himself, he nodded once in acknowledgement. "You're dismissed, Miss Lawson."

Her lips were pressed together into a thin line when she quietly stormed off, her pretty heels making little clopping noises on the nonskid as she went.

When the woman was finally out of earshot, Kasumi materialized next to Shepard, having been cloaked there for who-knows-how-long. Her speaking up made both Shepard and Joker jump a little. "Well! Remind me not to get on her bad side," the thief said, looking after Miranda with pursed lips and her delicate hands resting on her hips.

Joker and Shepard exchanged a look with one another, then looked at Kasumi, before bursting into fits of laughter.

\---

" _Garrus_?"

The Turian's mandibles shifted in his alien equivalent of a smile, blue eyes glinting with the light of his visor. "Shepard. Long time no see."

They had three pissed off merc organizations after them, but right then, the bigger priority for Shepard was bounding forward to throw his arms around the Turian's broad chest, failing to suppress a giddy laugh as he did so. He heard Zaeed scoff, and he'd swear that Kasumi was _cooing_ about it, but he didn't give a shit. The Turian chuckled awkwardly, patting his old Commander hesitantly on the shoulder like he didn't know quite what he was supposed to be doing, but he'd maybe sort of seen a human do something similar in a vid once.

 _Garrus_. Former cop, Spectre hopeful. Garrus was Archangel. Garrus was the one who'd managed to piss off half the mercs in the Terminus systems.

Garrus was one of the people the Illusive Man had given him a dossier on.

Shepard pulled away from the embrace suddenly at the realization, shaking his head. Garrus blinked down at him.

"This some kind of human custom I'm unaware of?" the Turian sniper asked, confused.

"No, it's-- _shit_. Alright. Long story short." Shepard took a quick breath and let it out in a rush as he spoke. "Yes, I died. Cerberus revived me because human colonies are going missing and the Alliance isn't doing anything about it. Ostensibly, anyway."

Garrus's mandibles shifted in a way that indicated distaste. "Cerberus, Shepard? _Really_?"

"Yes. And yes, they're manipulating me. I know they are. They led me here, and I just _know_ it's because they want to use you to keep me on a fucking leash." Shit. _Shit_. Shepard paced the length of the office space that Garrus had claimed as a hideout, eyes darting to and fro as he scoped out the area out of sheer nervous habit. _Cover. Cover. Exposed. Cover from the west side but exposed to the window._

Scanning the area gave him something to think about that wasn't _I am being used like some fucking tool_.

"The point is, he needs people he can trust, because this mission is big," Kasumi said, speaking up when it became apparent that Shepard was lost in his own head. "We know what's abducting colonists - it's the Collectors. We think they might be working with the Reapers."

"And who're you?" Garrus drawled, his eyes narrowing suspiciously at the thief.

"Kasumi Goto, master thief." She winked from under her hood. Then, she gestured at Zaeed. "This grumpy old guy is Zaeed Massani. He's a merc."

Zaeed just grunted in reply, eyeing the perimeter.

"I gathered." Garrus gave the old merc a once-over. "Blue Suns, huh?"

"Somethin' like that," Zaeed muttered. "Looks like we've got company."

Shepard only had to glance over to see what they were talking about. Oh, right, the security mech that he and Kasumi had quietly reprogrammed between them. "That problem'll take care of itself," he said dismissively, turning back to the group. "You're not obligated to come with me if you don't want to, Garrus. At this point I wouldn't stay at my side either."

"And miss out on all the fun that you tend to have? Wouldn't dream of it." Garrus gave him the Turian equivalent of a grin, a little gleam in his bright eyes. "C'mon, Shepard, you can't just drop a bombshell like that and expect me to _not_ come along. Even if it's only to watch your back so those Cerberus bastards don't put a bullet in it."

Shepard was relieved... but he was also a little pissed at the fact that it was something he might feel any relief about. Another piece of leverage Cerberus would have against him, and he couldn't do a damn thing about it because he really _did_ want someone as good as Garrus along, someone he could trust. _Shit_. "Then I won't stop you if you wanna come along."

"Damn right you won't stop me." Garrus seemed satisfied with that, nodding to himself. Then he picked up his sniper rifle once more, and headed back to his previous vantage point. "Now let's show these bastards what the most hated Turian vigilante in the system and the first human Spectre can do between them, shall we?"

"Just point me at whatever needs to be ripped apart," Shepard replied a little testily. Because honestly, he could do with some nice cathartic dismemberment right about then.

\---

About four hours later, and Shepard was back on the _Normandy_ , sitting cross-legged on the floor just outside the door to the medbay with his hardsuit still on.

His hands were shaking, and his eyes burned, but he didn't cry. Commander Theodore Shepard was _not_ a fucking crybaby, even if he got emotional sometimes. There were limits to how much he'd allow himself, even after a friend took a missile to the face.

Zaeed had done his job - he'd kept Garrus safe as well as he'd been able. It wasn't his fault. Technically, it wasn't really something that _any_ of them could have done much about, and Shepard knew that, logically, there wasn't much more he could have done. It didn't make him feel any less like shit, but facts were facts.

Damn, was he ever glad that he'd gone and gotten those dextro supplies on the Citadel.

Kasumi materialized at his side, plopping down on the floor and scooting right up next to him. He pretended not to notice her; she elbowed him gently as she curled her knees up to her chest.

"Hey," she greeted. "How's your friend?"

"I dunno." Even to his own ears, his voice sounded raw and rough. "I keep trying to tell myself he's a tough bastard, he'll be fine, but..."

"...buuut you've still got his blood all over you," Kasumi finished for him. "I think you're starting to get a little bit of a rash, even."

"Dextro blood does that if it gets into a break in your skin," he said in the sort of monotone one would use to blandly recite facts. It helped to sort of detatch himself from those facts, like if he thought of it in clinical terms it might make him feel a little less sick with guilt. "I've got plenty of those."

She clicked her tongue quietly. "Have you seen Chakwas about them?"

"Yeah. It's, heh... Apparently it's my immune system. Attacking the implants, making it so that they don't integrate right." He scratched idly at his blood-streaked skin with an equally bloody hand, all of it having long since dried to the point that it came off in little flakes of blue. "When it was just my heart that had the cybernetics, I was on immunosuppressants."

"Yikes. So why aren't you on those now?" She tilted her head curiously at him. Right. These were things she didn't know. "I mean, if they helped before."

"It's a trade-off. This-- these scars? The reaction to the cybernetics? I'm running a very minor constant fever, and they itch a little, but at least my immune system's still _working_. To take enough to fight back the reaction without surgery, I'd basically be about as healthy as a naked Quarian."

"And what about the surgery?"

"Not worth it."

"You're going to scare people if you keep going around looking like a crazy cyborg."

"Let them be scared."

"I mean you're going to scare your _friends_. People who worry about you. You still have a few of those, don't you?"

"I dunno, do I?"

Kasumi stuck out her tongue and blew a raspberry at him. " _Phhttthbtht._ You know what I mean."

He gave her a bland look in return. "Everything I've done is directed by someone else to some degree. Everything I say and every message I transmit or receive is monitored. A little paranoia is justified right now."

"Your friends are still _your_ friends. It doesn't matter whether or not Cerberus led you to them, because you're the one that made that connection with them." She nudged him again. "I mean, think about it. They keep trying to push Miranda and Jacob on you."

"Yeah, but they didn't have to push all that hard for Joker or Chakwas."

The thief rolled her eyes. "My point _is_ , you have a lot more agency than you think you do, Shep."

"That, or I just have one helluva long leash," he muttered, earning a flat look from her.

"Well. _If_ you ever finish wallowing - maybe Garrus can pull you out of it once he's fixed up, I dunno - come find me." She stood up with a little catlike stretch, nudging him once with the tip of her boot. "I'll be in the lounge, getting my stuff all organized and making sure nothing got broken in transit."

"Yeah, alright. Only so much that mass effect fields and bubble-wrap can do, huh?"

That got him a little smirk. "Sad, but true. Anyway, don't take too long. I found that _thing_ you were looking for."

He blinked after her as she left, his thoughts grinding to a halt once he processed what she'd said. It was a couple of minutes before he'd gathered himself enough to get up off the floor and follow her, his legs taking him to the lounge almost as if they were on autopilot. He could use some good news right about then.

Sure enough, she'd found what he'd told her to look for. Alenko was on Horizon.

Shepard felt the tension in his shoulders ease a bit when he heard that; he felt much better knowing what parts of the Terminus Systems he was going to be completely avoiding. The best way to keep Alenko out of all of this bullshit would be to stay well away from him, and it was much easier for Shepard to plan around that if he knew where his old friend actually _was_.

Would Cerberus see through it? Probably. But Kasumi was right about one thing, at least: to Shepard, friends were a much higher priority than paranoia.

 


	7. once upon a time there was you and me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard is afraid. He compensates for it by overplanning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THIS'LL BE A FUN TWO-PARTER. I bumped up the rating because I figure Jack's very presence turns it into an M-level fic, not to mention the upcoming probable violence.

Mordin Solus was a little crazy, but pretty awesome too. A prime example of not having to agree with someone to like them, considering his views on the genophage; Shepard respected his ability as well as his intelligence, and could admire the guy for sticking to his guns when it came to his ideas about the Krogan, even if he didn't share them.

Then there was Grunt, the baby Krogan in the hold that was supposedly as genetically perfect as Miranda was. Truth be told, Shepard preferred Grunt over his Cerberus-appointed second-in-command. At least the days-old, tank-bred Krogan respected his authority and didn't get snippy about something every five minutes. A part of him wanted to rub that in, but he knew it'd probably be better to save that kind of low blow for when Miranda had actually properly earned it.

Finally, there was Jack. He liked her immediately. Tattooed, pissy, tiny powerhouse biotic? One who hated Cerberus as much as he did, and had the frankly brilliant idea of running off to be space pirates after all the Collector bullshit blew over? _Yeah_. He fucking _loved_ Jack. In a friend way, though, since he was pretty sure she'd rip off his dick and feed it to a thresher maw sooner than sleep with him.

Not that he'd say no if she offered. Dear sweet mother of _God_ he would leap at the chance for that if she offered. Just once. He would be all over that if she'd let him.

"Hey, jackass, you're staring at my tits again."

Whups. "Would you believe me if I said I'm sorry?" he asked her with a grin.

She gave him an unimpressed look from her cot. "Nope."

"Damn. Worth a shot." And she looked so badass in the dim red lighting of the hold, too. Like, it was just perfect for her.

"Don't you have a galaxy to save or something?" She made a dismissive motion with one hand while casually reaching with the other towards a mug of military-grade sludge coffee on her makeshift desk, which consisted of two crates with a piece of sheet metal on top. Precise use of biotics took the mug from the desk to her hand.

He'd probably drop or crush the cup if he tried that. _Shit_. Practice and control, things he didn't quite have since his revival and implant upgrades, were two things that Jack had in _spades_. And Shepard thought it was one of the hottest goddamn things he'd ever _seen_.

 _Right... Time to leave before she notices I'm hard as a fucking rock. Play it cool, Shepard._ "Uh... I should go." He jerked a thumb back towards the stairs.

One pretty, sculpted eyebrow lifted. "Yeah. Okay."

 _Smooth, Shepard_.

He could not flee the lower engineering deck fast enough.

\---

A couple of hours later after having gotten some much-needed alone time with a copy of Fornax (followed by a shower, because he never knew if the aliens in his crew could, like, _smell_ that kind of thing on him or something), Shepard was poking at some tiny, obscure planet for eezo at the ass-end of bumfuck nowhere, when the CIC's intercom crackled to life.

"Hey, Teddy, the Illusive Man wants to talk to you," Joker said. "Says it's important."

"Tell him to fuck off. I'm busy." Even planet-probing was more appealing than talking to ol' Timmy. He wasn't looking forward to getting chewed out for, oh, about half the things he'd done. Letting the tank-bred Krogan out to play, for one. Giving Jack encrypted and classified Cerberus files, for another. Ooh, and then there was how he'd let Mordin sweep the tech lab for bugs, or that time he had EDI send sensitive Cerberus blackmail material to him personally so that he and Kasumi could go over it in his room and decide whether it was something they should send to the Alliance, the Council, or the Shadow Broker.

In the end they'd sent those files to the Shadow Broker, by the way. Then they'd split the credits between themselves because _why not_.

"Iiii think this might be, y'know, _actually_ important. Mission stuff."

Shepard sighed, leaning his elbows against the railing in front of him and resting his chin in his hands. The little holographic representation of a planet he'd been throwing holographic representations of probes at vanished, replaced by the zoomed-out galaxy map overview. "Must I?"

"He's sort of our boss, man, I'm not sure you wanna tempt fate. Besides, what if it's actually like, _important_? Not something we wanna be putting off, y'know?" Joker sounded sympathetic - he didn't trust the Illusive Man any more than Shepard did - but he also seemed a little nervous, which meant it probably _was_ important.

Straightening to his full height with a little bit of a wince, Shepard reluctantly gave in. "Patch him through to the briefing room."

"Aye-aye, commander," the pilot responded, and Shepard was on his way there before the intercom transmission was cut.

The briefing room had a holographic projector built in. The table in the middle of the room could be lowered, providing a place for both the projection and the person watching it. As it did, the lights would dim and the little holographic schematic of the _Normandy_ that usually hung in the air would flicker out of existence, replaced by the likeness of the person on the other end of the ship's quantum entanglement communicator.

It was all very neat. Much more advanced than what the old _Normandy_ had. Too bad it was usually used for calls with the Illusive Man. He would forever be left to wonder at how that kind of technology might be used for a live broadcast of a holographic lapdance with an Omega stripper.

The Illusive Man was decidedly _not_ an Omega stripper. "Shepard, I think we have them," he said, puffing on his holographic cigarette which was held between two holographic fingers.

Shepard sighed. He really wished the Illusive Man wouldn't smoke in front of him. It made his throat itch just seeing it. "This better be important, Timmy."

The Illusive Man got a little smirk, like he had the edge in this conversation. Like he knew something Shepard didn't. It was a very small smirk, and hard to see from his holographic representation, but it was definitely there, and Shepard hated it.

"Horizon - one of our colonies in the Terminus systems - just went silent."

For a second, Shepard felt like his heart had stopped.

Tapping the cigarette against an ashtray, the Illusive Man continued, "If it isn't under attack, it soon will be. Has Mordin delivered the countermeasure for the seeker swarms?"

It took another precious couple of seconds for Shepard's brain to catch up again. "--uh. No, not yet. He's working on it."

"Let's hope he works well under pressure," the Illusive Man said. "There's one more thing you should know. One of your former crew, Kaidan Alenko, is stationed on Horizon."

 _I know that_. _God, do I know._ "Do we know what he's doing there?"

"Officially, it's an outreach program to improve Alliance relations with the colonies."

"So it's a covert op?" Yeah, he knew that too. He didn't know all the details - he hadn't wanted Kasumi to get in too deep with the prying, considering it was borderline treasonous - but he had guesses.

"Most likely. And if they sent Commander Alenko, it must be big." The Illusive Man took a puff of his cigarette. "This is the most warning we've ever had, Shepard. Good luck."

 _I'm gonna need more than luck. And so is Kaidan_.

If Mordin wasn't ready with that damn countermeasure, Shepard was going to shank him with a broken petri dish.

\---

If there was anything Shepard knew about the upcoming mission as he was planning it, it was that things were likely to get clusterfucky _real_ quick. Thus, he fell back on the old tactic of _over_ planning; contingencies upon contingencies was always the best way to keep from fucking something up when you knew it was going to be delicate, in his experience.

Horizon was not going to be another Virmire. He would not charge in like an idiot and get his best people dead.

Once he had a plan drawn up, and he knew Mordin had synthesized enough of his countermeasure, he called everyone up to the briefing room.

Eight people, nine if he included himself. Two biotic specialists (one of them being himself), two munitions and sniping experts with leadership and combat experience, one doctor with tech expertise, one stealth and tech specialist, one Krogan, and two non-specialists with decent biotics who had both leadership and combat experience.

He could work with that.

Shepard cleared his throat once everyone was in the room and situated around the table, except for Mordin, who was innoculating everyone with his countermeasure thing and equipping omni-tools with spare doses for any colonists they found. "All right, people. This is gonna be our first operation as a single cohesive group and I wanna make sure everyone knows what their jobs are and what's up. Any questions before I start?"

"Yeah, does the cheerleader's suit have boob-socks or something?" Jack quipped. "'Cause they are like, vacuum-sealed in there or some shit."

Miranda rolled her eyes and made a little disgusted noise, her lip curling in a faint sneer. Shepard felt himself smirking, but he didn't laugh like he might have otherwise.

"Going to assume there's no _relevant_ questions, then." He leaned forward with his palms flat on the table, seeing no point to standing at his full height when his full height was that of a midget. "Zaeed, Garrus, you're our heavy weapons and our snipers. Assume that hostiles will be armored and mod your weapons accordingly."

"Concussives and armor-piercers?" Garrus mused.

"Sounds appropriate," Zaeed muttered in agreement.

"Grunt, pack a Firestorm and a Claymore. You and Jack are our front-liners."

Grunt grinned broadly and toothily. "Heeehh."

"Not telling me which guns to use, boy scout?" Jack asked, sounding bored.

"If I did, you'd ignore me and use whatever the fuck you wanted anyway," Shepard answered. "Miranda, Jacob, you're squad leaders. Jacob, you take Zaeed and Jack with you; Miranda, you get Garrus and Grunt."

"Isn't that overbalancing Jacob's group towards biotics?" Miranda said sweetly; more than once before, she had gotten into an argument with Shepard about squad balance.

He was ready for her argument. "It's as balanced as I can make it with two adepts and _nine_ fucking people, and between you and Jacob, you're the stronger biotic anyway."

She didn't seem to know what to do with the compliment, and it took her a moment's worth of blinking at him in shock before she composed herself. "I suppose that's fair."

"What about us?" Kasumi asked. "Me and Mordin, I mean."

"You two are with me. I'll be the tank."

Mordin tapped a long finger to his chin. "Hm. Problematic. Overall squad durability a concern."

"We're the infiltration team, Mordin. We punch through, then Jacob's team gets a foothold, while Miranda's brings up the rear."

"Sound strategy. However, not much margin for error, improvisation."

"You just focus on stocking up on medigel and stimpacks for now, and follow my lead when we get there," Shepard said. "Alright. We'll be taking both the Kodiak and the Hammerhead. Jacob pilots the shuttle, Miranda gets the hovercraft. Grunt, I want you to familiarize yourself with the Hammerhead's weapons controls. Garrus, you're in charge of keeping it running if it catches fire."

Garrus chuckled. "Just like old times."

"Yep, just like you and Wrex in the Mako. If shit hits the fan, we'll need an exit plan, and most of that will fall on you guys. The Kodiak doesn't have much in the way of weapons, so the Hammerhead will have to cover for it until it can get the hell outta there. The _Normandy_ should be pretty quick to rendezvous for a pickup with a little bonus firepower from Garrus's upgraded Thanix cannons - thanks, Garrus - but every second counts when you've got a Collector ship riding your ass.

"Once we land, I'll be taking Mordin and Kasumi with me to scout out the area as quietly as possible. While we're doing that, Garrus, you and Zaeed will be finding vantage points for a bird's eye view and mapping the most efficient routes to the communications hubs for your respective squads.

"If things start to look like they're going south on us, we'll split up even further; Jacob and Miranda will go back to the vehicles to keep them secure, while Zaeed will take over leading the squad that remains, which will also have Jack, Grunt, and Garrus."

Zaeed smirked. "I can do that."

"Miranda and Jacob can handle themselves, and I've got Kasumi and Mordin covered. But Jack, you'll pretty much be on barrier duty for your slightly oversized squad over there if things fuck up. I'm assuming you can handle that?"

Jack still looked bored, but Shepard was starting to get the impression that boredom was her default state. "You keep assuming shit about me and I'll break your fucking jaw," she said, mildly annoyed. "But yeah, I can handle that."

"Good." Shepard fished around briefly in a pouch on his hardsuit utility belt, came up with a handful of spare amps, and tossed them to her. She caught them with ease. "Take these."

She eyed the amps suspiciously, holding one up to the light to inspect it. "What for?"

"I burn through those things like fucking _candy_. Figure it won't be too different for you."

Something about the statement surprised her. Or maybe it was the act of seeming charity behind it. "...Thanks, I guess." After a minute she shrugged it off, and pocketed the borrowed amps.

Shepard turned back to the rest of the room and took a steadying breath. "This isn't the suicide mission, but it's still gonna be a big fight. We all need to take this shit seriously if we're gonna come out of it in one piece; these bastards tore the first _Normandy_ to shreds, and she was an over-engineered work of art. We don't really have any idea what we'll be facing, or how many hostiles we'll come up against. But the Collectors are bugs on a windscreen compared to what we think is behind them.

"This is a human fight now, but it'll be the galaxy's fight soon enough. We're the galaxy's vanguard. We're the front line. And these bugs will _not_ punch through us."

 _Kaidan, hang on. I'm coming._ "Alright," he said finally. "Let's gear up and move out."

 


	8. catastrophe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes, it doesn't matter how much you prepare. Whether the preparation goes wrong, or takes too long, or is all for nothing - sometimes things just go wrong.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I regret NOTHING.

It was quiet when they landed on the colony. Way too fucking quiet for Shepard's liking. Like Freedom's Progress had been.

Stepping out of the shuttle, he gestured for Garrus and Zaeed to move at the front of the group and find vantage points from which to scout ahead, drawing his Carnifex and powering up its armor piercing mod. Kasumi was at his side with her Locust drawn and ready, while Mordin was going over data on his omni-tool.

Shepard could see the swarms in the distance, hear the buzzing in the air, but they weren't coming any closer or even really giving any indication that they'd noticed the landing party. _Good_.

"Gotta love field testing this lifesaving preventative measure of yours, Doc," Shepard mumbled.

"No way to know for sure whether it will work until tested. Should be exciting."

 _Yeah, exciting isn't the word I'd use_. Shepard glanced back at the rest of the group, motioned for them to stay put, then gestured with his hand in such a way as to indicate that Kasumi move ahead first. The thief nodded once to show she understood, and seemed to flicker out of existence as she activated her cloak.

Now they would wait.

A minute later, they found the first hitch in Shepard's plan. "--epard, we're ge--ing some interfe--ance up he--" came Garrus's voice over the comm, barely intelligible through the static.

 _Shit_. "Garrus, you and Zaeed fall back. I repeat, _fall back_." Shepard ordered.

He breathed a quiet sigh of relief when the response came through. "Cop--that, Sh--ard, hea--ng ba-- now."

"Collectors interfering with communications," Mordin said grimly.

"Yeah." It was a pretty big goddamn problem; it'd make coordinating three teams seperately impossible. _Fuck_. "Alright, change of plan. Miranda, Jacob, time for plan B. You two stay with the vehicles and keep them protected. Everyone else, stay close and stay sharp."

Both Miranda and Jacob nodded, saying "yes, Commander" and "aye-aye, sir" respectively. Well, at least Miranda didn't argue with him about it.

Kasumi was quick to materialize near them again, with a spare first aid kit in hand; she handed it to Mordin. "Found this, figured it might come in handy," she explained.

Shepard looked at her sharply. "Report."

"No signs of a struggle, but the Collectors are out in force." Kasumi's nose crinkled in distaste. "They have these pod-things. Some of them are closed - looks like those ones might be where our colonists went - but some are open and empty. Seemed to me like the Collectors are doing a sweep for something."

"Looking for any colonists they might've missed?" was Shepard's suggestion. Kasumi just shrugged.

"Maybe. Either that or they know we're here and they're looking for _us_. Mordin's countermeasure masks us, but not our vehicles, right?"

That was a possibility he didn't want to think about.

"Shepard!" Garrus called out, rounding the corner with Zaeed a few meters behind him. "Shepard, these bastards have _husks_."

Fuck. Fuckfuckfuck _fuck_. Shepard remembered husks. Shepard _fucking hated_ husks. "Any dragons' teeth?" he asked, fighting to keep his voice level; dragons' teeth was the common term for the spires the Geth had used to impale people on, to turn them _into_ husks. He'd seen it happen before. He never wanted to see it again.

"Couldn't see any from where I was standin'," Zaeed answered. "Didn't stop there bein' dozens'a the fuckin' things crawlin' around the goddamn compound."

Dozens of husks. Husks that the Collectors had probably brought with them. Husks they'd probably gotten from some other world's population, or that the Reapers had gotten from some other world's population. Shepard's mind and heart were both racing as he fought back against his rising panic.

Kasumi put her hand on his shoulderguard, giving it a pat. The contact made him jerk, but her quiet little nod when she caught his eye managed to ground him somewhat.

Reapers or not, this was for Kaidan. He couldn't let fear stop him.

"Zaeed, take Grunt, Jack, and Garrus with you and make as much noise as you can. Jack, if they send swarms, barriers are on you."

"Got it." She didn't even question it. He was quietly thankful for that.

"Grunt, your Claymore's modded for incendiary rounds, right?"

The young Krogan grinned wide. "Yup."

"Good. Use it. Focus on being the loudest, meanest motherfucker out there. Draw their attention, piss them off, set them on fire-- I don't care what you do, just keep them off everyone else and try to give Garrus and Zaeed every chance for a clear shot that you can."

"Heheeehh."

"Kasumi, Mordin, you're with me. We'll see if we can't get some doors open and bring communications back online."

If nothing else came up, they could still do this cleanly.

"Let's move."

\---

The Collectors were more than they could have anticipated.

One minute, Kasumi was getting in close for her usual shadow strike technique - cloaking in and cutting through the enemy with an omni-blade - and the next, Shepard heard her cry out as she was clipped with a blast from an enemy particle rifle.

The sound made his blood run cold, and he was moving before he was actively thinking about it, picking up the responsible bug and flinging them aside with his biotics even as the action made his amp run dangerously, painfully hot; ignoring it, he charged ahead anyway, out of cover and into the line of fire.

"Mordin, lay down some cover fire!" he shouted, and the Salarian called out an _affirmative_ as a split second later, an incinerating blast caused three Collector drones to burst into flames, while a fourth up on a balcony was frozen solid. Shepard heard it shatter when it hit the ground, but didn't give himself time to find satisfaction in it. He had to get to Kasumi. He wasn't going to lose another friend. _Not again_.

He found her propped up against a crate, her cloak damaged enough to be flickering and her shields gone. One hand still had a shaky grip on her SMG, while the other clutched a wide, partly-cauterized gash on her side.

She gave him a pained grin. "Hey, Shep," she greeted, voice wavering.

 _Shit_. "Hold still, I gotcha." He started to pull out some medigel, but had to pause in favor of forcing her back down when she tried to move.

"I-I'll be okay. Can't say I've had worse, but at least it's not bleeding everywhere--" she started to say, but he cut her off with a snarl.

"I said to fucking hold _still_ , damn it," he barked. He put up a quick barrier around the both of them while he applied the medigel with surprisingly steady hands; it'd need to be seen to by Chakwas, later, but he could at least keep her from going into shock, or passing out from septicemia. "We'll get you back to the shuttle and you can wait there with Miranda and Jacob until we're done, okay?"

She laughed, but it was punctuated by a sharp hiss of pain. " _Ow_ , okay, fine. Hard to argue when there's about a half a centimeter's worth of tissue damage keeping my guts from spilling out."

"'Atta girl," he said, giving her a little pat and as reassuring a smile as he could manage when he was finished. Shots were already grazing his extended barrier, causing it to flicker. He could feel every little bit of feedback as a sort of pinprick-jab of white-hot pain from his overheated amp to his implants at the back of his skull.

He was almost glad that Kasumi was too distracted by her own injuries to notice. She'd definitely be annoyed with him if she did.

Thinking quickly, he flicked on his comm to the frequency his team had been using. "This is Shepard, requesting immediate assistance. If anyone can read me, please respond."

"Vakar--n here, c-- barely ma-- out what you're s--ing, She--rd," came the distorted answer from Garrus.

"Garrus! How quickly can your team rendezvous with mine? Kasumi's injured, she needs an escort back to the LZ."

"Shep--d I don't th--k you un--rst--d how b-- the c--ms are--"

"Just get your asses over here!" Shepard ordered. Kasumi pursed her lips in silent amusement, but didn't say anything on the matter; probably because the medigel wasn't doing as much as he'd hoped, and he didn't have the tech or supplies on him for much more. For him, the VI in his hardsuit could link up to his cybernetics for more efficient distribution. Kasumi didn't have that luxury.

She may've been a tech expert, but she was still mostly human.

It was a couple of minutes before Zaeed's group came into view around one of the little prefab units that littered the colony, accompanied by the sounds of assault rifles, particle weapons, and Jack's biotics warping the air around her. Shepard breathed a sigh of relief when he saw them, finally letting down his barriers; the pain of maintaining a mass effect field for so long after his amp had already begun to overheat receded to a dull throb.

Once the others had cleared out the area (Zaeed had nicked one of the Collectors' own weapons and seemed to be having a lot of fun with the thing, Grunt was splattered with ichor from dead Collectors, Garrus's armor was looking a little more scarred in a couple of places, and Jack had yet to let her biotics wink out of existence), Garrus came over to where Shepard and Kasumi were, holstering his assault rifle and helping her to her feet.

"Perimeter's secure, but we don't know for how long. We found a few colonists along the way, innoculated them, and told them to stay hidden." The Turian's mandibles shifted in what Shepard had learned was his equivalent of a grin. "Handed them Zaeed's Vindicator just in case, though. I dunno too much about human body language, but I think he's pretty happy with the replacement we found him."

Shepard had to agree; the merc was inspecting the newfound gun almost fondly, smirking crookedly. He couldn't find it in him to be amused, though, not really. "Any sign of Kaidan?"

"Alenko? No." The plates above Garrus's eyes shifted a little. It almost resembled a frown. "Can't say he'd be one to hide from all this, either. Knowing him, he'd be up in front, protecting people."

"That's what worries me." Shepard bit the inside of his cheek, thinking for a second, then reached back to remove his burnt-out amp so he could replace it. The skin around the port was blistered and peeling, but if he were going to be honest with himself, he'd done far worse in the past when he'd had the bog-standard L3s. "Can you get Kasumi back to the shuttle?"

Garrus nodded, and Kasumi didn't do more than give a little annoyed _hmph_ ; probably because she was leaning heavily against his arm already. "Sure, but what about you? That leaves you with just Mordin."

"We can collapse it down into one oversized squad. Better that way with the comms being jammed anyhow." And easier to coordinate. "Getting them working again is the top priority. Can you have the Hammerhead ready to move and fight by the time we've got a connection with the _Normandy_ re-established?"

The former C-Sec officer seemed almost insulted. "Shepard, remember who it is you're talking to. I could use that thing's main gun to thread a needle."

"And he'll have me to help keep everything... _calibrated_ ," Kasumi added with a little smirk. Garrus sighed and shook his head, while she continued. "Go find your Commander Alenko. We'll keep the engines warm for when you're ready for us."

Shepard let himself smile faintly. "Thanks, guys."

 _Kaidan, please be okay_.

"Zaeed, Grunt, Jack, Mordin; you're with me."

\---

Shepard hated husks. He'd also found out in the past half hour that he hated scions.

But this praetorian thing, which the heads-up display of his visor so helpfully provided him with a name for? He probably hated _that_ the most.

Within thirty seconds it had knocked Grunt out of the action, slicing through the Krogan's armor with a beam of some kind that put Zaeed's stolen particle weapon to shame. Shepard had been forced to distract it by ducking out from behind cover and taking its attention away from the now injured and pissed-off Grunt, shouting for Mordin to get the young Krogan to safety and see to his injuries (a bit more colorfully than that, though).

At about that same point, Shepard had discovered that this new _thing_ \- a thing that flew a good three meters off the ground, had a beam weapon, and seemed to be an amalgamation of husks but with _claws_ and a fucking _beam weapon_ , Jesus motherfucking _Christ_ \- had regenerating barriers, and less recharge time for its weapon than he needed for his _own_ barriers.

He was _very fucking lucky_ that Jack grabbed him and _pulled_ him behind a stack of storage crates with her biotics, otherwise he'd probably be missing his head instead of it having just partly melted his visor, burnt through part of his right shoulderguard, seared part of the right side of his face, and clipped his right ear.

"That fucking _thing_ has barriers," he half-yelled over the ringing in his ears. "I hit it with a warp and they came right the fuck back up again."

"No shit." Jack slapped another thermal clip into her shotgun. Zaeed was nearby, peppering the thing with shots from his particle rifle and spitting profanities when its barriers prevented him from doing much more than just scarring its thick armor. "Got any ideas?"

Shepard considered for a second. "Yeah, one or two," he said. "How's your amp?"

"Burnt through three, got one spare left after this one." She smirked. "You?"

"On my last one after that last round of husks." Just like old times, aside from it not being Kaidan that he was commiserating with. "I figure if I put up a singularity, then we both warp it at the same time, while Zaeed hits it with that rifle of his, it'll rip it to shreds."

"Sounds fuckin' insane. I like it." Jack craned her neck to look over at the merc. "Hey, Massani, you get all that?" she half-shouted.

"Think so," Zaeed called out. He was a few meters off, behind a burnt-looking prefab wall, but he was still within earshot. "I'll keep the sonnuva bitch busy while you two kids do your thing, yeah?"

Jack and Shepard exchanged a look; she nodded to him once, then extended her barrier over both of them. Shepard could feel the prickle of it over his skin, unfamiliar but similar enough to his own that it wasn't a distraction as they both came out from behind their stack of crates to work their science-fueled magic.

The singularity seemed to startle the creature, dividing its attention briefly and making its barrier flicker erratically. Then it shrieked as both Shepard and Jack hit it with simultaneous warps, shattering the barrier completely and eating at its armor from the inside. Finally, with its defenses down, Zaeed seized his opportunity and blasted it with his stolen particle weapon.

There was nothing left of it but cinders and a pile of foul-smelling, charred _bits_ when they were done.

Shepard stared for a second, his heart hammering away in his chest, and then he bolted for the communications tower that the thing had been keeping them from. Booting the systems up was easy. Too easy, compared to fighting Collectors. He did a little fist-pumping gesture of triumph once he was able to get it working.

"Garrus, Joker, do you read? This is Shepard." EDI could get the colony's GARDIAN-class defense towers online. Garrus and Joker had the Hammerhead's guns and the Thanix cannon.

He felt like cheering when he heard them answering. Then he felt like cheering again when the _Normandy_ swooped in overhead, keeping pressure on the Collector ship that loomed nearby, keeping it from focusing on the defense towers that EDI was booting up.

It had one gun. Shepard had a gun on his ship, a gun on his hovercraft, and the guns his AI was hijacking for him.

When it was forced to flee, Shepard _did_ cheer. But then he remembered why he'd come in the first place, why he'd _really_ come, and he stopped.

One of the surviving colonists came out of hiding as the massive Collector vessel receded from view, angry with Shepard for letting it go. "No, you can't just let them leave like that! Half the colony's still on board! They took Egan, and Lillith, and--"

He didn't get a chance to protest further. Shepard grabbed the man by the collar and yanked him down to eye level, causing him to yelp.

" _Where's Alenko_."

"What, who? What? Let go of me, y'damn--"

"Staff Commander Kaidan Alenko," Shepard snapped. " _Where is he_."

"How th'fuck should I know? Who cares about some Alliance bastard anyway? Fuckin' biotic freak, let go--"

Neither Jack nor Zaeed stopped him from decking the snivelling little backwater colonist _shit_ ; he was thankful for that. But more than anything, he would've much rather heard Kaidan's voice, shouting _Shepard, what the hell_ , and he would've rather felt Kaidan's hand grabbing his arm to keep him from landing another hit. Maybe even Kaidan's biotics holding him in a careful stasis field, not enough to stop him if he wanted to break it, but enough to make him pause and get him to think.

Because that would mean that Kaidan was there, with him, and not _gone_.

"We'll do another sweep," Shepard said, keeping his voice carefully flat and level. Maybe Kaidan was still frozen. Maybe he was hiding, or keeping a bunch of civilians somewhere else on the colony safe until he knew they were in the clear. He could hope. Shouldn't, but did anyway.

By the time he returned to the shuttle so they could all head back to the _Normandy_ and lick their wounds, he was feeling too numb and hollow to be disappointed about that tiny shred of hope being for nothing. Kasumi put her hand on his shoulder on the ride back, and Garrus tried to cheer him up over the comm by bringing up the good they'd done for this one little colony, but he was beyond comfort.

He would rather have Kaidan with him, yelling at him, bringing up regs and protocols and _integrity_ like he always fucking did - _that_ would be comforting.

 


	9. i talk to the rain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What? No, don't be silly, of course he doesn't-- okay, maybe he does a little, but it doesn't really MATTER now, does it?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Took a bit to write this one, and it ran a little longer than anticipated. Next chapter we get back to plot again. Yes, yes I did change the tags, thank you for noticing.
> 
> Proofreading this time is by the FANTASTIC Jupiter_James@AO3 / JupiterJames@Tumblr! GO READ HER STUFF IT IS AMAZING.

Shepard refused to be tended to until Kasumi and Grunt had been given treatment. But even then, with his battered hardsuit long since peeled off along with his unsalvageable visor, he fought back against what Chakwas was telling him about dermal regeneration procedures and his cybernetics. Oh, he knew he'd give in eventually. He just wanted to fight back. It made him feel like he still had some control over the way things went, and he needed that right about then.

"I don't want to do the procedure," he insisted. He hadn't had the medbay upgraded just for the sake of some damn cosmetic scar-fixing bullshit, he'd done it so that he could be sure his people were getting the right treatment.

"If you only kept a more positive outlook as I'd instructed, we wouldn't be having this discussion," Chakwas admonished him, cleaning up the burns on his face and making him wince as she did; there were _bits_ of his ruined visor that had gotten lodged in the wounds, and medigel did jack shit for shrapnel. "As it is, the constant stress you're putting yourself through is causing your body to reject the implants even further, and the semi-permanent low-grade fever you're running as a result is only serving to increase your stress levels."

"Then give me some immunosuppressants. Or, hell, some goddamn fever reducers. Jack something into my hardsuit. I don't have time for this shit."

"You're pushing yourself too hard, Theodore. You're only human, and you have limits."

Shepard laughed bitterly. "I'd take comments like that more seriously if I didn't look like the fucking Terminator, Doc."

Chakwas leveled a stern look at him. "You know full well what I mean. Your heart may have been rebuilt, but your health is still just as precarious as it ever was, in spite of your bravado and all that Miss Lawson has so graciously done for you."

"I don't have time to be recovering from surgery right now."

She arched a thin eyebrow at him; Shepard thought her look would be very much suited to peering over the rims of a delicate pair of glasses, in spite of her not having any. Her lips pressed together in a disapproving line before she turned away to look at her laptop. "You know, it's times like these I wish Alenko were here to talk some sense into you. He always seemed to be able to," she said casually.

Shepard gripped the edge of the sickbed he was sitting on so tightly that his knuckles turned white. _She's doing it on purpose. She wants to prove I'm not fit for duty._

"How're my implants?" he asked. _Don't you fucking dare bring up Kaidan_ , he wanted to say, but didn't. Changing the subject worked just as well.

Chakwas eyed him blandly for a moment, and then she let out a weary sigh. "Fine for the moment. They're designed for extended periods of heavy use. However, your amp port has been badly overloaded - likely due to the fact that you've been using substandard biotic amps - and even if you don't have it repaired or replaced, you'll need to give the tissue around it a few days to heal."

He grit his teeth. A few _days_? He had to go after that fucking ship. He didn't _have_ a few days. _Kaidan_ didn't have a few days. Shepard had delayed enough with all his damn planning, and preparing, and fidgeting, and fucking _hesitating_ because he wasn't _sure_ , and he was just. _Done_.

But he didn't bring up Kaidan. "Those colonists don't have a few fucking _days_ , Doc," he said instead. "There isn't time for me to be sitting on my ass, so just-- _damn it_ , I don't know. Get me some fever reducers or immunosuppressants or even some fucking red sand. Get me _something_ , just get me back out there!"

"I can't do that, Shepard. Not in good conscience, as a doctor or as your friend."

"Then I'll get Miranda to do it! Or, hell, I'm sure Jack would be willing to lend a fucking hand!"

Her brows furrowed. "Shepard, you need to calm down."

That was the point where Shepard's rising temper reached its boiling point. "Like _hell_ I'll calm down!" he snapped, dropping back to his feet.

"Shepard--"

 _Don't tell me what to fucking do_. His biotics flared, a pulse of dark energy that flickered over his skin. But in their wake there was a sharp pain that seemed to jab into the back of his skull, stabbing white-hot through his brain and making his vision swim.

He came back to himself after what could've been a half-second or an hour later, clutching his head and gritting his teeth hard enough for his jaw to ache. He tasted blood from the inside of his cheek and realized he must've bitten it.

Chakwas had gotten up out of her chair, and was staring at him with no small amount of concern. She waited for his biotics to wink out, and then she came forward to put a gentle hand on the side of his face that hadn't been seared by a Reaper monstrosity's beam attack thing.

"You'll do Kaidan no good in your current state, Theodore," she said, sounding just a bit apologetic. And maybe a little motherly. He didn't know too much about the second bit, though; he'd never really known his mother. "I doubt he'd approve of you putting yourself through this for his sake."

Shepard swallowed thickly. Everything hurt. He didn't know what was physical and what was emotional anymore. He felt like the universe's fucking chew toy.

"I want him back, Doc," he admitted, in a tiny voice that he barely recognized as his own.

"I know," she replied. "So why don't we get you back into proper fighting shape so you can go and fetch him, hmm?"

He nodded and let her lead him back to a sickbed. He was too numb and tired to argue anymore.

\---

Never in his life had Shepard been good at sitting around idly. With little to do except think about the situation at hand - and give both his repaired cybernetics and his L5x implants a rest - he could only feel anxious and trapped as he tried in vain to pass the time using bootlegged romhacks of antique games.

He'd been back at Arcturus when a roommate - a big, gawky vanguard who'd sadly never returned from Akuze back during the Blitz - had introduced him to the concept. Said roommate also had a habit of bringing his romantic conquests back to their shared bunk space and locking him out, so the games had been a welcome distraction at the time. But as he sat in his fancy captain's cabin on the _Normandy_ , waiting out what Chakwas called "a brief medical leave of absence", those games only served to remind him of what he'd lost.

See, back on the old _Normandy_ , he'd managed to get a good chunk of his squad into it, too. Wrex had immediately developed a fondness for fighting games, particularly the more bloody and visceral ones. Garrus was naturally good at shooters, but he wasn't bad at strategy, either. Ash had a weird affinity for visual novels, especially the sappy ones, even though she was just as good at shooters as Garrus was. Sometimes Tali would join her in them, but she preferred her romance to have an element of action or adventure to it, and the occasional story-driven RPG could catch her attention. Liara liked puzzles, and could often help others in the crew when they got stuck on them. Joker liked driving, racing, and flying games. Kaidan enjoyed platformers and physics challenges. Shepard liked things that rewarded skill and completionism.

Pretty much every genre that _could_ be organized into something competitive had been turned into a miniature tournament among the crew at some point. There had been co-op, too, though they'd avoided MMOs for the sake of actually getting back to their real jobs eventually. It had been fun, and it had helped them forget sometimes that they were hunting down a rogue Spectre who wanted to bring about the end of the galaxy with the help of a race of ancient machines.

Shepard had hoped that maybe in going back to it, he could get that back - that _distraction_ , that reminder that things weren't so bad if something so _fun_ and made purely for the sake of enjoyment could exist in the universe - but it didn't work. In fact, it did the opposite by making him sink even further into his malaise.

After trying for a day to fix himself on his own, and succeeding only in nearly breaking down when he tried to boot up an old physics platformer that involved brightly colored portals, he gave in and sent Kasumi a message on his omni-tool, asking if she had free time. Saying he'd like someone to talk to if she did. He trusted Garrus, but the Turian was a little awkward with emotions in general; he trusted Joker, too, but the pilot would rather snark about issues than actually talk, and would say to "look on the bright side" as if it would actually _help_ when it never, ever did. Kasumi was his best bet, really.

She answered him with little more than a minute's pause, and fifteen minutes after that, she was at his door.

When it opened, he almost didn't recognize her; she wasn't wearing her hood, or her suit for that matter. Instead she was wearing a loose robe made of some black fabric with a faint sheen, tied with a sash around her waist (not a kimono, though, since the design and cut of the robe seemed to be more western in its style). He couldn't see if she had anything on underneath it to cover her torso, but she was at least wearing pants, along with a pair of dainty slippers. Her hair was down, too, long and straight and raven-black, falling down over her shoulders and framing her face nicely.

He was momentarily stunned by it. He also felt just a bit inadequate in his own casualwear of an oversized sleeveless shirt and Galaxy of Fantasy-patterned flannel pants.

"I'd wear my suit, but the patch-job that Chakwas did itches," she explained, walking in as casually as if she owned the place. She ran a delicate hand over the surface of Shepard's desk, giving his small office space a once-over. "You okay? Your message worried me a little."

"Uh." His brain took a second to catch up as she wandered over to peer into the empty fish tank. "It... frankly seems kinda stupid now."

She turned her head sharply to look at him with a tight little frown. A moment passed in silence, and he honestly felt a little uncomfortable under her scrutiny. Then she sighed, and crossed the distance to sit down next to him on the bed with a slight wince as the movement tugged at the so-called patch-job. "It's not stupid if it has you calling on the most injured person in your friend circle to drag herself up to your cabin so you have someone to talk to."

Shepard huffed. "Now you're making me feel like an asshole."

"No, just inconsiderate sometimes. But that's okay." She patted him on the shoulder with a sweet smile. His friends were way too forgiving of his bullshit, really. "Besides, if it's about your Staff Commander Alenko, talking might do you some good. Believe me, I know 'hopeless' when I see it."

Hopeless? _What the hell does that even mean?_ "Not sure I follow, but, yeah. It _is_ about Kaidan, kinda."

"Mmm. I see." Kasumi tilted her head and gave him a wry look. "You didn't call him Kaidan before. Up till now you've always called him Alenko when you talked about him."

He blinked for a minute, surprised by her statement. What was even more surprising was that when he tried to think back on it, he realized that she was _right_. "I-- Have I?"

"Yup." One of her petite little hands went to brush her hair out of her face as she summoned up her omni-tool, the orange glow of the haptic interface contrasting sharply with the blue light from the empty fish tank. After tapping out a few commands, she called up a still two-dimensional image on the omni-tool's holographic display.

An image of Kaidan. Shepard's breath caught in his chest.

"That's him, right?" she asked.

"Yeah." His voice sounded oddly thick; he swallowed heavily as if it might help with the sudden lump in his throat. "That, uh. Looks like it was taken just after the fight against Sovereign. They were taking pictures of all of us. He kept trying to hide his face. Said he didn't want to take credit. But I mean, that's bullshit, y'know? He deserved credit as much as any of us did."

Kasumi smirked to herself, letting Shepard ramble. "I think he's cute."

"Huh? I... uh." Shepard was left to blink at her again. "I wouldn't-- Ash thought so, I think. I caught her sister teasing her about it once."

"You don't have an opinion?" The thief raised an eyebrow at him.

 _What_. No? Why would Shepard have an opinion? Why did she think-- wait, was she _really_ suggesting what he thought she was? _Seriously_? "I'm... You think I'd. _No_. Kaidan's-- no."

"Just 'no', Shep?"

"Yeah. I-I mean, no. Kaidan's not--" dear fucking _God_ he could never hope to match up to that, he was just some kid from the streets, what would Kaidan even want with a pissy little shithead like him "--I'm not into other guys like that," he said eventually. Because _no_. He wasn't. Not like that. He liked women. Powerful, smart, beautiful women.

Right?

"A-and even if I were - which I'm _not_ -" he felt the need to add that, especially under her scrutiny "- then it wouldn't matter because he's probably fucking _dead_ by now."

"Uh-huh." Kasumi smiled knowingly, but it looked a little sad, too. "But if he isn't?"

He couldn't help but feel lost. Because, if Kaidan _were_ still alive, and if Shepard _could_ get him back or save him somehow... He didn't really know what he would do then. "I... I don't know, okay?" he admitted. "He's my friend. Probably my best friend. I want him back, but I don't know if he wants _me_ back. I don't have a goddamn clue. Can't, not until I see him."

"What was it like between you two before, then?"

Shepard took a deep breath. No reason to lie to Kasumi. Even if he weren't honest with her, she'd find out anyway, right? She had ways. Besides, he trusted her. "He... he'd stand up to me. Most of the time he didn't agree with my methods. I mean, in case you haven't noticed, I'm kind of an asshole, alright? He'd call me out on that, and... I respect that. It takes balls to stand up to your commanding officer. Kaidan has integrity. Always tries to do the right thing."

She softened a bit. "He sounds like a good person," she remarked when there was an opening for her to do so.

"Yeah, he is." There wasn't any hesitation to that. Kaidan _was_ a good person. "But he's so smart, too. God, he's such a fucking _nerd_ sometimes, but that's only if you can get him going, because otherwise he's just so damn quiet. That guy spends so much time in his own head, thinking himself in circles. He's content with himself. And he's so _confident_ , but he never comes across as cocky because he's confident in things that he _knows_ he's good at because he's earned his skill with them. He's got this, I dunno, this subtle kind of strength that I guess most people don't see, and I'm really envious of it sometimes, 'cause I can't _do_ subtle, and... and..."

He trailed off, realizing that not only was he babbling like a complete _moron_ , but also that Kasumi was watching him with this catlike grin like she knew something he didn't.

"...and. I'm ranting. Shit."

"Oh, no, keep going. You light up when you talk about him. It's adorable."

"I-- _what_?"

"Well, unless you're capable of going on like this about, say, Garrus, or maybe Joker?" She smiled coyly. "I think it's pretty safe to say you like this guy."

"Kasumi, stop suggesting I want to bang Kaidan. That's weird."

"How is it weird? Besides, I'm not saying you want to sleep with him. I'm saying you want to stay up late watching terrible old movies with him while sharing a bowl of slightly burnt popcorn."

"That's-- that doesn't even _mean_ anything. I mean, yeah, okay, I wouldn't mind that, but that's a thing friends might do."

She rolled her eyes, deactivated her omni-tool, and folded her arms to give him a meaningful look. "Shep, love isn't about sex. Sex is a perk that comes with the territory. Love is about mutual respect, trust, admiration, and affection."

He felt heat creeping into his face. "I don't _love_ Kaidan."

"But you respect him, you trust him, you admire him, and you're fond of him."

" _Kasumi!_ "

"I'm just calling it like I see it, Shep. Take it from an expert on the subject."

"I don't-- _No_ , damn it."

"Why are you so against the idea? You're arguing pretty hard here."

"There are a lot of fucking reasons to be against it."

"A lot, huh? So you _are_ thinking about it."

"God, you're not gonna let this go, are you?"

"Well _apparently_ you like being argued with."

"I d-- Woman, quit putting words into my fucking mouth."

"So tell me all the myriad reasons why you _don't_ like Staff Commander Kaidan Alenko."

"I _do_ like him, damn it! I just don't know if he'd like _me!_ "

Kasumi blinked, taken aback by the outburst. Honestly, Shepard was a little surprised himself.

Because the answer was easy; he'd realized it almost as soon as she'd helped him connect the dots. It was the _implications_ that answer made that were hard to swallow. _I don't need anyone_ , he thought. But that was what bullshit like love always seemed to mean - needing someone, and being needed in return. Wasn't that how it always went?

"Why not?" Kasumi ventured.

"Kaidan doesn't need anything or anyone." Never had. Shepard had respected that. "What use does he have for me?"

Her nose crinkled. "What does _that_ have to do with anything?"

"It-- isn't that how that kind of thing works? Liking someone?" When she only gave him a perplexed look, he continued, "--I mean. Attachment is just something that can be used against you. Look what Cerberus is able to do to me by using my friends as bait - I'm on a goddamn leash at this point. I tried to keep Kaidan out of all this, stay away from him as much as I could, because they'd use _him_ against me, too. And it'd fucking work, because he's the one I was closest to. I'd be inclined to want to keep him safe. That's how feelings _work_."

A small frown pulled at her features, concern furrowing her brow. "Oh, sweetie."

"Look. I know it sounds insane, but I've dealt with Cerberus before. They're manipulative as _shit_ , okay--"

"No, it's not that, not at all." Her frown deepened. "You think being close to people makes you weaker?"

"Always does. There's no question." Again, his answer came without a second's delay or pause. "I work most efficiently on my own, but I know that from a strategic standpoint I really can't _do_ that. Not with this kind of mission. I'm not a jack of all trades. The downside is that I get attached to people I work with." He thought of Ash, who he hadn't been all that close to. Her death had still cut him deep. It had _hurt_. More so in knowing that the decision had been his.

"Oh, Shep," she said sadly. "You don't want to get hurt, do you?"

"No. Not that it matters. It's kinda too late now, isn't it?" He smirked sort of mirthlessly, feeling as hollow as he had when he'd gotten back on board the _Normandy_ after Horizon.

Kasumi frowned for a bit longer, but then a determined glint came into her eyes. Reaching out and putting her hand over Shepard's own, she looked at him dead-on, with an odd tension in her jaw. "We'll get him back, Shep. I promise."

He wanted to believe her. He really, really did. "I still don't think he'll need me around for much."

"No, but if you're lucky he might _want_ you around. I'd say that's _way_ more appealing, wouldn't you?"

Shepard had to admit, it kind of _was_. But he couldn't quite figure out what Kaidan could possibly want from someone like him.

 


	10. voices silently sing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Time to pick up Tali.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> YAY, HAESTROM.
> 
> I made an art for all you sillies, which you can find here: http://logicalfangirl.tumblr.com/image/115232526625  
> Hooray for sunburnt dorks.

On the third day after Horizon, Ted Shepard was jolted out of his troubled sleep - dreams of Protheans, torture, death, destruction, Reapers - by the buzzer-sound that indicated someone was at the door to his cabin. Breathing hard, he sat up and wiped the back of his hand across his sweaty forehead, before pressing the heel of his palm against his tightly shut eyes until he saw stars.

It didn't help to chase away the visions from his nightmares. Nothing ever did. The buzzer went off again, and he swung his legs over the side of the bed, stretching in a way that made his rebuilt joints crack and pop audibly.

"Come in," he called out. It was probably Chambers, come to check up on him or evaluate him or some shit. Maybe Chakwas. Best case scenario, it was Jack, come to comfort him with her tits and some clever application of biotics which he was absolutely certain she was capable of.

As it turned out, it was Miranda. But hey, a guy can dream, can't he? "Hello, Shepard," she said, unfazed by his shirtlessness and need of a shave. Honestly, if what he'd heard was true, she'd seen him when he was just a lumpy pile of meat-slurry. She probably didn't give a rat's ass about his appearance. "We've put together a few more dossiers for you to look over when you get the chance. EDI's scans show that you seem to be recovered enough to return to duty for the time being, and the Illusive Man would prefer you to be back at work as quickly as possible."

Shepard laughed bitterly. "You can tell ol' Timmy that my response is 'suck my dick, asshat' because I don't work for him."

Miranda lowered her head, smiling her too-sweet angry smile. "Cerberus isn't the enemy, Shepard, no matter how much you'd like to think it is. We look out for the best interests of humanity just as much as you do."

"I'm not looking out for humanity. I'm looking out for the whole goddamn galaxy." But he was tired. Tired of arguing, tired of fighting. He wanted his friends back. He wanted Kaidan to be okay and not in horrible life-threatening danger. He wanted the galaxy to stop needing to be saved all the time. "The Reapers aren't just a danger to us. They don't just want humanity dead. They want all intelligent, civilized life in the galaxy to be either wiped out or bent to their will."

"Which is why it's counter-productive to constantly be fighting us, Shepard. You're smart enough to know that."

"But you're smart too, Miranda. I know you are. You're smart enough to know that you're being played just as much as I am." Shepard stood up from the bed. He wasn't as tall as her, especially not when she was wearing those fucking heels of hers, but he'd stopped being intimidated by people who were bigger than he was a long time ago. "This'd be a lot easier on both of us if you stopped for a second and just listened to how insane your boss sounds."

"Insane, or brilliant?" She had this look on her face like she thought she'd won, but Shepard wasn't convinced. He knew a manipulator when he heard one, and the Illusive Man definitely fit that description. "Either way, you should probably get cleaned up and take a look at those dossiers. My advice would be to stop at Illium first." She held out a datapad.

After peering at it warily for a second, he took it from her, although he didn't look at it. "Center of Asari power and trade in the Terminus, huh? Well, a step up from Omega, I guess." Secretly, he preferred Aria. She didn't put on airs. He'd be willing to bet a handful of credits on her father being a Turian. "Where would the other dossiers be taking me?"

She put on her best quietly annoyed and disapproving expression. "Haestrom."

"Haestrom?" Where the hell was that? He'd never heard of it, so it had to be on the ass-end of nowhere. Shepard turned his attention to the datapad so that he could scroll through the entries, frowning at the screen.

- _Dossier: Tali_

- _Tali'Zorah vas Neema_

- _Expert in combat tech, systems hacking  
_ - _Strong engineering background, familiar with Normandy_

- _Formerly listed as Tali'Zorah nar Rayya, the quarian engineer earned her adult name after helping Shepard defeat Saren two years ago_ \--

Shepard didn't need to read any further. He thrust the datapad back at Miranda and stormed over to his wardrobe, pulling out his undersuit while he was in the process of taking off his pants. Once they were off, he immediately began tugging his suit on and getting himself situated in it.

Miranda blinked. "Shepard?"

"Tell Garrus to suit up and meet me in the shuttle bay. And Kasumi too, if she's feeling up for it," he instructed. "If she isn't, then get Zaeed."

"Up for what? Shepard--"

With his suit halfway pulled-on, he turned to Miranda and closed just enough of the distance between them to clap a hand over her mouth. She made an indignant noise of protest and went to yank his hand away, but since he'd already cut her off effectively, he pulled his hand back before she had the chance. "I want you to tell Joker we're setting a course for Haestrom, and when you do, I want you to add that as soon as we leave the mass relay, we need to be running silent - we need to be in stealth mode the second it's viable - but have the FTL drive and the Thanix cannon ready just in case."

For a second it looked like she was about to say something. Maybe she wanted to argue. He couldn't be sure, because instead of doing what she probably wanted to do, she straightened her posture again, schooled her expression into something more poised, and nodded primly. "Understood, Commander," she said.

Thank God for small mercies. "If any of them argue, tell them it's in Geth space," he added as he sealed up his undersuit, reaching for the compartment of his wardrobe where he kept spare amps. He'd probably break out the rations along the way. "And if Garrus or Joker argue with you, tell them-- shit, tell them it's Tali."

"With all due respect, Commander," Miranda said, placing special emphasis on his old rank, "are you sure your personal feelings won't be getting in the way?"

He sighed irritably, walking past her and towards the door. Time to head to the armory; fighting Geth would be an excellent way to test out that arc projector thing that Jacob had been trying to show him. "Your objection is fucking noted, XO Lawson. Dismissed."

\---

Shepard had always burned easily under direct (or even indirect) sunlight, but Haestrom was fucking ridiculous. By the time they got to the first real bit of cover - a building that was very square, very practical, and looked like it had been carved out of the solid granite that made up this portion of the planet's crust, much like the rest of the small compound did - he figured he had to at least be the color of an overripe peach from the neck up. He was also willing to bet that a few more minutes would bring him up to looking like a strawberry.

Sure, he could go back to the shuttle for his helmet. But by that point it felt like cheating. Besides, the helmet restricted his peripheral vision, and he needed that to fight.

At least Garrus was amused. "I knew humans didn't have much in the way of UV protection, but right now, Shepard? You almost look like you're being boiled."

"Thanks, Garrus." Rolling his eyes, Shepard holstered his heavy pistol and found his way to a utilitarian prefab shelving unit so he could sift through it in search of anything that might help. Probably a lost cause, though, especially in his case; this had been a Quarian colony before the Geth had taken it over. It was doubtful he'd even find much in the way of useable medigel for himself or Zaeed.

Of course, Zaeed was faring somewhat better than he was, but the guy's skin already looked like boot leather, so a little sunburn didn't do much more than turn him slightly red around the edges. He, too, was rifling through an abandoned storage unit. "Looks like a weapons locker here, Shepard," he said.

"If you can find a Geth assault rifle, it's yours. Otherwise, I doubt anything the Quarians left behind is still working." At first he'd wanted to bring Kasumi, but Zaeed and his incendiary grenades made for a decent replacement when she'd decided not to come along. Besides, the old merc was damned loyal, and it'd only taken killing the leader of the Blue Suns to get him that way.

"Just as well. I'm enjoyin' the hell outta this goddamn Collector thing I found." Zaeed grinned crookedly and pulled out his stolen Collector rifle to admire it. "Sons of bitches know their weaponry, I'll give'm that."

Garrus pouted a little. Or at least Shepard thought what he was doing was a pout. Even being used to the Turian's expressions, it was hard to tell sometimes. "Now why can't I have one of those? Couldn't you have 'borrowed' more than one of them?"

"You jealous of my gun, Vakarian?" The merc held up the particle rifle just out of Garrus's reach, only to pull it back and chuckle when Garrus (predictably) reached for it.

The Turian's arm fell back to his side. "No, it's just upsetting to see such a fine piece of equipment in the hands of someone who doesn't have the skills to use it properly," he said, accompanied by a little huff that didn't quite translate. So yes, he was jealous.

Zaeed's expression was almost a leer. "Not the size of the gun, but the way you use it, eh?"

"Steady aim is a must when it comes to truly being able to appreciate a weapon that can keep firing for such long bursts. Something you humans seem to have a problem with."

"Alright, you two," Shepard interjected. "We can bring out the measuring sticks when we get back to the ship, but right now we've gotta find Tali."

Garrus did that sort-of-pout thing again. "Measuring sticks? Massani and I were just talking about his rifle, that's all."

It was hard to tell whether he was feigning innocence or legitimately confused. Zaeed grinned and ran with it, though. "Yeah, nothin' wrong with a little friendly banter about guns. Unless of course you're intimidated or somethin'."

Shepard shot the scarred merc a pointed look. For a second he considered letting his temper get the better of him and biotically throwing Zaeed at the nearest wall, but in the end he decided against it and merely shrugged. "Who needs some clumsy big-ass gun when you're a biotic? You can do a lot with creative application of mass effect fields."

Both weapons experts blinked for a moment, and then Zaeed let out a rough bark of laughter.

"You're all right, Shepard," the merc said with a smirk, shaking his head as he put a fresh clip into his weapon and headed back out. Shepard couldn't help his grin as he followed, pulling his Carnifex pistol back out and loading it. Garrus, however, stayed behind for a bit, still looking a little lost.

"...wait, I'm confused. Weren't we talking about guns?"

"Get'cher bony arse out here, Vakarian, or you'll be outta targets to practice your goddamn aim on!" Zaeed shouted.

"Right, sorry."

Apparently he hadn't gotten the innuendo after all.

\---

They managed to contact Tali all of once before they found her, over a barely-functioning comm that was probably connected via an ancient land-line. Interference from the red giant sun was throwing off everything but the lowest-frequency basic radio transmissions. She was surprised but relieved to know they were there, her whole squad having died to keep their precious researcher safe.

Well, the whole squad except for one man, a lone Quarian with a suit puncture and a rocket launcher who had bought Shepard and his team enough time to shoot their way through the Geth and get to her. But in the end, he'd ended up dead too. Shepard's fault, in a way. The guy had volunteered to cover them. Shepard shouldn't have let him.

Eventually it was the experimental arc projector that Shepard had gotten from Jacob - a big goddamn railgun, basically - that had won the day. Four shots from that, a couple of biotic warps, some incendiary grenades, and a couple of overloads had been what it took to get rid of the Geth Colossus that stood between them and Tali. After that there was just a heavy, rusted blast door in the way, and the controls for that were so easy to bypass that Shepard could probably do it in his sleep.

When he saw her, all pretentions to being okay fell away.

"Just a minute. I need to get these-- oof!" Shepard didn't let her finish whatever it was she was trying to say; he'd crossed the large room and tackled her in a hug from behind before she could finish her sentence, burying his face in her shoulder with an incoherent mumble.

He'd missed her.

Tali stiffened in his arms for a second, but soon enough she'd relaxed into his embrace with a tired sigh. She tapped out a few final commands on her omni-tool before turning slowly to face him, putting one hand on his arm and smoothing the other through his colorless hair. "It's good to see you too, Shepard," she murmured.

It took a minute for him to finally pull away, and his eyes burned a bit but he refused to cry, he would not cry, that would be admitting defeat just as much as if he were to walk right up to a Reaper without any armor and throw away his gun. He couldn't see her face through her mask, but he could imagine her look of concern as he felt the light pressure of her hands against his hardsuit, over his scalp, and he took strength and comfort from that.

"What's wrong?" she asked. Gentle and kind, but not pitying.

She made him feel safe enough to speak in spite of his voice being choked and ragged, because he knew that she would understand why. "Tali, they've got Kaidan."

Tali froze at his words, her hands going very still. Then she was pulling away, turning back towards the ancient console, working quickly at its flickering and dodgy interface. "What about Kal? Is he all right?" she questioned, more sharply this time. Like she was gathering information that she could work with, so she could form a plan.

Kind of like Shepard did. He swallowed heavily and shook his head. "Uh, I don't... think so. I'm sorry. He wanted to buy us time to get to you through the Geth. I shouldn't have let him."

She scoffed, her fingers dancing over the console; she activated her omni-tool again and it, too, became a part of her elegant electronic manipulations. "I don't think there's any room for you to blame yourself for that, Shepard. He decided to be a foolish bosh'tet and paid for it." There was a beep, and something that looked like a card or old circuit board of some sort ejected from the console. Tali deftly plucked it from its slot and stashed it in one of her many pockets. He heard her mutter something like "the admiralty board had better thank me for this".

"Do you, uh..." Shepard gulped again, mentally cursing his voice and the Collectors and his emotions and his goddamn weakness when it came to people he cared about. "Do you need time to grab anything?"

"That was what I was doing when you got here." She patted her pocket. "I'm ready to go when you are."

He was able to smile, recalling chats that had gone late into the night about Quarians carrying their homes with them and having mastered the art of travelling light. "Then let's go. Joker'll be happy to see you."

"I'm sure. But if the first thing out of his mouth is a statement about my hips, I'm going to feed his hat to a Vorcha." She started towards the door before Shepard could say another word, leaving him feeling a little better in her wake as he trailed after her. "Assuming he still has his hat, at any rate. Hello, Garrus. Don't. I'm not in the mood, and I have a shotgun."

Shepard was glad to finally have her back.

 


	11. dewdrops

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Passing the time until ol' Timmy decides to come through.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Took longer than I meant to, sorry. I'm not going to promise that the next chapters will go quicker because I know that'll come back to bite me in the ass. Beta as always by the fantastical morphia@AO3, with encouragement from the lovely oncelovedyou@tumblr who always puts up with my Teddy nonsense.
> 
> With fanart! YAY! http://ank-shey.tumblr.com/image/115598161945

The Illusive Man was stalling, Shepard knew. He had to be. That was the only explanation. Shepard was certainly poking EDI often enough to ask if she had any new leads.

"Not yet, Shepard. Should there be any progress towards finding the Collectors, you will be one of the first to know," she said in her usual placid and polite tone. Ugh. Damn machine.

Someday he was going to warp his way into the AI core and start tearing out wires.

Tali was wonderful, as always. Talking to her was like a breath of fresh air. The two of them discussed what could have been happening to Haestrom's sun - a star only shifts into its red giant phase when it's burned enough of its mass to start getting starved for fuel and moving on to the elements that are important to keep it functioning, much like a person burning through their fat reserves and starting to burn through muscle when things get desperate - and even came up with some possible answers.

For instance, maybe the mass relay was siphoning energy from it somehow, since most mass relays tended to be tied to solar systems and not the space between them; a troubling thought if it were true, considering just how many mass relays there were and how many systems they were in. Or maybe the Geth had found a way to directly scoop matter from the star itself to fuel their own ships, whittling down its reserves in the process, unlikely as that would be since even the Geth were sensible enough to not blow up stars for giggles. Maybe it was part of some grand unknown experiment that an organization like the Salarian STG or the Spectres had yet to reveal, that involved mass effect fields and matter conversion gone awry.

Who knew. The point was that it was bad, and finding out what was doing it could help prevent future incidents of a similar nature from occurring. If it were something that could happen in other systems to other stars, it had devastating implications. Some races might even try to weaponize it, like what happened every goddamn time something dangerous was discovered in the galaxy.

It was nice to think about science instead of people being assholes for a change. Shepard liked science. He'd always been good at it. Then Jack needed him for something and he was back to thinking about people being assholes. Goddammit.

She'd found out where she'd been raised from the cerberus files he'd let her see: a facility on Pragia, long since abandoned. She wanted to plant a big fucking bomb and blow it to hell. He could get that.

So that was where they went next. Not Illium, and not after the Collectors. If ol' Timmy wanted to stall, then Shepard was gonna fucking stall right back. He had people he trusted. He wasn't about to hit the Omega 4 relay, but he could go get information. He could do recon. He wasn't even getting to do _that_ , and it bugged the shit out of him that he was flying blind.

He brought Zaeed along, too, because he had a feeling Jack would need emotional support, and Zaeed had become a sort of gruff storytelling uncle to her. No one else really knew her that well, or even tried to, because comfort wasn't usually taken very well. Zaeed understood that. He got the whole "tough love" thing.

Even the old merc was horrified by what they found when they landed, though.

"I've done some bad stuff in my day, but this..." He trailed off, brow knotted.

Shepard had to agree. "I thought I'd seen the extent of what biotic kids used to go through. This shit makes BaAT look like fucking summer camp." He hadn't been to BaAT, he'd just grown up on the streets as a secondary exposure kid. That had been hard as it was. He figured what Kaidan had been through was harder, or at least more jarring.

What would Kaidan think of a place where they literally tried to torture kids into being better biotics, with the blood smears on the walls and floors to prove it? Shepard could imagine his reaction, shock and horror giving way to cold, quiet fury.

"They'd bring in new kids in these crates," Jack explained, gesturing to some stacked shipping containers. "The kids would come in alive. Usually." Her tone was calm, like she'd become numb to the horror.

Shepard wasn't numb, but he was observant. "What's that over there? That blue glow." He indicated in the general direction of it as he spotted it behind some crates. The place was running on emergency lighting and backup generators that were only barely functional. There wasn't enough power for other shit, and the glow didn't flicker; it was steady.

Zaeed went to look, pushing a tree branch out of the way; just more evidence of how long the place had been left to rot. Then he jerked back, looking mortified. "Son of a bitch," he muttered.

"What is it?"

"Refined eezo," the merc answered grimly. "Bastards were forcing exposures."

Yeah. Kaidan would hate that place.

\---

After they got back, Shepard had barely gotten the chance to get his hardsuit peeled off and start poking at the galaxy map for minerals and shit when Miranda decided it was her turn to bug him. Maybe she was feeling left out. Jack got to set off a nuke, and Miranda wanted to have her turn in the limelight, too. Her chance to ask Shepard for help with a thing that was just for her.

That wasn't what it actually was, but it was what Shepard was thinking of while Miranda nervously (nervously! Miranda Lawson didn't get nervous, that would be absurd, except she _was_ nervous and it was pretty damn obvious that she was fidgeting) explained the situation with her sister, and her father.

Shepard thought for a second that it might all just be an excuse to go to Illium, except Miranda was genuine enough with her concern that he wasn't going to press the matter. For once, he didn't rib her about any of it. Instead he just sighed and - reluctantly - gave in. Even if it felt like giving too much ground; even if it felt like all he'd been doing since he'd come back from the dead was giving too much ground to people who shouldn't have had any in the first place. Compromising with people who shouldn't be compromised with.

They docked at Nos Astra - Illium's largest port city - and his doubts about going to Illium vanished the second the concierge sent to greet them mentioned Liara T'soni.

"Liara's here?" he blurted. Behind him, Kasumi snorted and Tali sighed.

The Asari concierge smiled politely. "Liara T'soni has become one of the most powerful and respected information brokers Illium has to offer--" and that was all she could get out before he barged past her, into the port, into the city.

He didn't even so much as wave at Liara's secretary (assistant? greeter?) when he reached her office. He just marched right in. Liara looked up from whatever she was doing at her desk, dressed in a modest, downright demure green suit-dress; she gasped when she saw who had invaded her office.

"Oh, Shepard," she breathed. In an instant she was up and out of her chair. And for once, Shepard wasn't the one to initiate the hugging, as she swept him up in her arms and smushed his face into her chest.

He definitely wasn't going to complain about that, returning the hug with an awkward little pat. "Hey, Liara." He smiled at her as she pulled away, then blinked and felt a blush coming to his still faintly sunburnt features when she took his scarred face in her hands and kissed his forehead.

"It's so good to see you're all right." Liara let him go to beam at him. "And you as well, Tali. I hadn't expected to see you, but you're far from unwelcome."

Tali ducked her head, her body language a little bit sheepish. "Hello, Liara."

Kasumi snickered, smirking to herself. "This is becoming a thing with you, isn't it Shep?"

The Quarian cocked her head to the side. "Is it now?"

"Well, the hugging seems to be," the thief answered. "He hugged Garrus."

"He has hugged me twice." Tali sounded a little put out.

"Ooohh. Does this mean Shep's a cuddler?"

"I don't know, maybe. He is very touchy. I know that. It made me wonder at times if all humans were as touchy."

"I'll have to remember that. Maybe it's a comfort thing?"

"With Shepard? Who knows. I don't know enough about humans to know how many things are Shepard quirks and how many are just human quirks-- ooh, is that a Logic Arrest?"

"Hm? Oh! Yes, yes it is."

Shepard sighed, his shoulders slumping. He should have been glad that the girls were getting along, but in reality he was just tired. A glance at Liara told him that she was at least somewhat sympathetic about the matter, smiling at him in a kind sort of way.

"I'm glad you're here, Liara," he told her sincerely. "I could use your help."

The young Asari looked a little saddened by that. "My capabilities are rather limited at the moment, but I will do what I can for you."

Right. He could understand that. Two years. People had moved on. "Then I'll be as up-front with you as I can. I just need to know a few things, alright? You're an information broker, you can probably help me out on this."

"Certainly. I can't come with you; my own work is too important to abandon, even for you. But if anything I know can be of use to you..."

"Yeah. Okay. Thanks." He took in a slow breath and let it out in a rush. "Do you know anything about the Collectors? Their movements, their transactions? I'm told they work through intermediaries; do we know who? Do we know where, and when?"

"I don't know much, Shepard. Usually they work through slavers, and target outlying populations that are exceptional in some way. They tend to take a few dozen people at a time, at most. Often from places where it's assumed that they won't be missed. Few people even know for certain what they look like..."

Shepard activated his omni-tool and pulled out a still image he'd gotten on Horizon of a Collector corpse.

Liara blinked. He could swear some of the color drained from her face, but that could just be his human impressions about expression and body language that he was projecting onto her. "Oh, Goddess..." There was obviously something going through her head, though. He could tell that much.

He wasn't in the mood for a rambling explanation of what that might be. "These sons of bitches are what's been hitting human colonies in the Terminus Systems," he explained. Then, lowering his voice, "Liara, they have Kaidan."

Liara bit her lip gently, and offered a slow nod. "I will find what information I can for you."

"Thanks." Ol' Timmy might be stonewalling him, but Liara? Liara he could work with. "Now while I'm here, there's a couple of people I'm trying to find. Maybe see if I can't recruit them. And there's also someone on my crew who needs help with making sure her sister is safe-- something about their father going after her?"

"If you can give me names, I'll tell you what I can," she said.

He raised an eyebrow. "Just like that?"

She smirked, and the expression was so odd on her, so playful, that he was struck with the thought that she must've grown up quite a bit in the past two years. "I am a very good information broker, Shepard."

\---

Kasumi was practically itching under the mantle of responsibility that came with following Shepard around and not causing trouble, so after some wandering he decided to let her go off on her merry way to raid as much of Illium as she liked - with the understanding that she was to come back to the docked Normandy as soon as she was finished or called upon - and took Grunt with him instead.

Tali did not enjoy Grunt's company nearly as much as she remembered enjoying Wrex's. Shepard didn't remember her enjoying Wrex's all that much either, but at least they had gotten along on the matter of shotguns being cool.

Unfortunately, Grunt did not have the attention span to talk about shotguns with her. Grunt would rather be distracted by the shiny advertisements about Fishdog Food Shack or Sirta Foundation bone weaves or Asari fashion trends or the latest Blasto flick. Essentially, having Grunt around on Illium was like dragging an ADHD five year old around in a shiny object store.

Together, the three of them went to pick up Thane Krios. They were about as subtle about it as a young, loud Krogan with a shotgun, a petite, unenthused Quarian engineer, and a small, mouthy biotic human could be. Which is to say, not the least bit fucking subtle at all.

Shepard punched a merc out a window, and broke the arm of a terrified Salarian with a gun to keep him from using it. Tali hacked her way through locked doors and sealed accounts left and right, and took a certain amount of satisfaction from hacking enemy combat drones. And Grunt was, well, Grunt. He had a Claymore and he was a Krogan. No explanation needed there.

They made a lot of noise as they made their way up the Dantius Towers to get to the woman who was Thane's target. Which in turn gave Thane the opening he needed to get to his target from a stealthier angle.

Shepard didn't stop it from happening, even as Nassana Dantius was killed in front of him. He'd dealt with her before; he could say honestly that she deserved it. Tali was a little taken aback, and Grunt gave a loud bark of laughter, but Shepard just watched as the willowy Drell broke the necks of two mooks, shot another, and put a pistol round right through Nassana's heart.

He kept watching as the Drell laid the Asari woman across her own desk, and bowed his head in prayer over her cooling corpse. That, Shepard hadn't expected.

"Thane Krios?"

The Drell didn't respond, head still bowed. Shepard's brow knotted.

"Hey, I'm talking to you."

"Prayers for the wicked are not to be taken lightly," Thane rasped. Shepard didn't know enough Drell to know if his voice being so rough was a racial thing or an individual thing.

What he did know was that Nassana deserved no prayer. "She can rot in hell. I knew her. She put out a hit on her own sister, among other things."

"Not for her," the Drell corrected. "For me."

"Ah." One of those self-deprecating assassin types. Shepard was reminded briefly of antique comics he'd read when he was a kid. "Ever heard of the old Earth graphic novels about a mutant monster called Nightcrawler?"

Thane tilted his head, but there was a glint in his eye. "I have not."

"Figured. Had to ask." Shepard shrugged it off, putting it to the back of his mind before he could ask if Thane had any religious symbols carved into his skin as an act of penance. Because that would be weird. "I'm recruiting for an offensive against the Collectors. They've been abducting human colonists."

"The Collectors? Interesting." Thane's hands went behind his back as he stood at a very close equivalent of Alliance parade rest, regarding Shepard with those unnervingly big alien eyes. "Then you intend to pursue them through the Omega 4 relay."

"Probably. It's a suicide mission pretty much any way you look at it."

That glint returned to Thane's eyes. Intrigued, amused, curious. Shepard might just be projecting again, but he could swear that he was able to read the Drell's expressions fairly easily. "What is your name?"

"Shepard. Theodore Shepard."

"Commander Shepard?"

"Maybe not so much now. I'm not sure the Alliance would take me back after I've been working under the Illusive Man's boot heel."

"You work with Cerberus then."

"Barely. Only until this shit with the colonies is all worked out. Don't worry, if they get uppity I'll start punting people out of airlocks."

"Of that I have no doubt. Your reputation precedes you, Shepard." Thane smirked a little then, tipping his head forward in a slow, respectful nod. "I have no interest in Cerberus, but your colonies? That intrigues me. A way to do some good, but with slim odds of success."

Shepard stiffened slightly, suddenly wary. Was this guy a death-seeker? Had ol' Timmy sent him after someone who was legitimately suicidal?

Thane must have seen through his apprehension, because he spoke again after only a short pause. "This was to be my last mission. I'm dying."

Oh. That made a lot more sense somehow. "So long as it's not contagious."

"It isn't. Nor will it affect your mission."

Alright, Shepard could roll with that. "Treating the last of your life like a cram course for the afterlife. I can respect that."

Thane smiled. "A reasonable analogy."

Shepard decided at that moment that he was going to like Thane Krios.

 


	12. breathless

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The start of the downward slide.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hahahahahahahahahahaaaa
> 
> My deepest apologies for being so late with this, as originally I'd intended to give my usual proofreader a break, but then the secondary proofreader was taking slightly too long so I ended up sending it to my usual proofreader anyway. 
> 
> Some fantastic fanart by ank-shey@tumblr again: http://ank-shey.tumblr.com/image/116819747125

It was just after they'd gotten Miranda's sister safely on board her shuttle that Shepard received the message from Joker saying that the Illusive Man wanted to speak with him. And for once, Shepard didn't delay at all. If the Illusive Man wanted to speak with him, it meant news about the Collectors; if there was news about the Collectors, then that would put them that much closer to saving the lost colonists.

And maybe, just maybe, it'd put them a few steps closer to saving Kaidan too.

In the airlock, down the length of the CIC, cut through the tech lab, then down the hall to the briefing room; Shepard ran most of the way, and was a bit out of breath by the time he got there. He hadn't even bothered to take off his armor. Hell, he still had his visor on.

"Tell me you've got something," he said as soon as the QEC was active and the Illusive Man's holographic silhouette was visible.

"We caught a break." Ol' Timmy was standing, not sitting, but he was smoking a cigarette like always. Shepard couldn't be bothered to care right then. "I intercepted a distress call from a Turian patrol. They stumbled onto a Collector ship beyond the Korlus system."

"Guessing it didn't go well for the Turians."

"Actually, they managed to disable it before retreating. It's adrift."

Shepard looked up sharply. "How disabled are we talking?"

"All major systems seem to be offline. Weapons, engines, life support."

Good enough for him. "Send us the coordinates."

The Illusive Man smirked. "Already done. EDI will link with their systems when you get there and scour them for any data we can use."

"Understood." Fucking Christ, he was taking orders from the Illusive Man like it was no big deal. The galaxy really had gone insane.

"Good luck, Shepard."

The connection was severed, and Shepard whipped around to storm off down the hall - back to the CIC through the armory, picking up Zaeed's stolen Collector rifle and nicking Garrus' modded armor-piercing Mantis sniper rifle as he went. He didn't so much as wave at Jacob; he'd get to the whole _distress signal from father's ship that disappeared ten years ago and was assumed MIA_ thing later. There were more important things to take care of.

"EDI, send a message to everyone who's not on board to get back to the ship by 1800. We're leaving at 1830. I'm headed to the shuttle bay to get set up; I want Kasumi and Tali down there by the time we drop out of FTL."

EDI's electronic voice chimed in, her tone placid and calm as always. "Of course, Shepard. Do you have any last-minute requisitions you would like to place before we disembark?"

"Depends. We stocked up on medigel? Fuel reserves at capacity? Got enough thermal clips to last us a mission or two?"

"Yes."

"Then unless you can get me a decent supply of high quality human-compatible biotic amps that the L5x implants won't burn through, we should be good."

"There is a Serrice Council supplier in Nos Astra who has been selling biotic amps in bulk after the death of Nassana Dantius was reported."

Shepard blinked, stopping just short of the elevator that'd take him down to the shuttle bay so he could stare at the nearest console where he figured EDI was watching from. "...EDI, have I ever told you that I fucking love you?"

He could've sworn he heard a smile in her simulated voice. "Seven times in total, Shepard."

"Let's bring it up to a nice even number. I fucking love you."

"Would you like for me to arrange a transaction?"

"Can you have them here by 1830?"

"With your permission."

"Your limit's twenty thousand credits. And for the record, you are a magnificent electronic angel."

"Logging you out, Shepard."

It definitely sounded like she was smiling.

\---

The Collector ship was fucking huge, and Shepard was a ball of nervous energy as the shuttle Joker remotely piloted over to it neared its destination. He hadn't realized just how much the thing dwarfed the sleek little _Normandy_ , which was twice the size of its predecessor to begin with.

He also doubted that it was as dead in the water as it seemed, given that it had barely a goddamn scratch after the Turians had apparently disabled it.

When the shuttle landed, Shepard did a final check on the seals on his suit, just to be safe. Most of the Collector ship's systems were offline, and that seemed to include life support. If the damn thing had life support at all. He wasn't sure. Maybe something rudimentary, but Mordin seemed to think that the Collectors could survive something a lot closer to vacuum conditions than humans could.

Yes, that had been a thing Shepard had asked. It had been in the same barrage of questions as the words "so how do I kill it", and the conclusion reached had been that spacing a Collector might not kill it, but it would leave it flailing around uselessly in the vast unfathomable void between astral bodies. That at least counted as disabling it in Shepard's books, and a disabled Collector that was trying to floppy-space-swim its way back to its gun was far better than an armed Collector just down the corridor making angry scrabbling clicking noises that vaguely resembled some kind of speech.

Thoughts like that didn't help him feel any less like he was trapped inside a giant beehive when they landed, though.

"Shades of Ender's Game. Feels like a Formic base," he mumbled over the comm, breaking the tense silence.

Kasumi didn't miss a beat. "Not Starship Troopers?"

"Only if I'd gotten a tattoo with my buddies back on Arcturus after I completed N7 training." Shepard paused, thinking. "One of them did get eaten by a thresher maw on a mission that was supposed to be routine, though. So I guess Starship Troopers could sorta work. Maybe."

"Yikes. Were you close?"

"Ehh. He was kind of an annoyingly perky son of a bitch. I don't miss that he used to lean on my head."

Tali giggled, but it sounded almost giddy from sheer nervousness. Shepard remembered how much she hated creepy crawlies from back when they'd dealt with the Rachni, so the Collector ship was probably a little uncomfortable for her. "I'll have to remember that for later," she said. "Maybe I'll tell Garrus."

Shepard groaned. "Please don't."

Both women laughed, and a little of the tension in the air dissipated. Shepard felt a bit of relief too. Small talk was nice. It felt normal, and it helped keep Shepard from descending too far into his own thoughts.

Still, Shepard couldn't shake the feeling that something was very, _very_ wrong. And another couple of minutes of poking around the eerily empty ship later, that nagging feeling of uneasiness was reinforced.

"Shepard. I have compared the ship's EM signature to known Collector profiles," EDI said over the comm. "It is the vessel you encountered on Horizon."

At that statement, Shepard froze. That had to be a trick, right? A joke? One of EDI's shitty jokes? Because they'd done a scan and there had been no lifesigns picked up on the ship--

His thoughts ground to a halt. He swallowed thickly, trying to ignore what the more coldly logical and rational part of his brain was telling him.

But there was no use in ignoring it. He'd denied himself enough truths already, all for the sake of not getting hurt. Like when he'd died, he figured it had to be better to just get it over with. Had to be.

He could taste bile in the back of his throat when, after a few seconds' worth of pause, he eventually worked up the ability to respond without his voice breaking. "Run a scan for the RFID on a set of Alliance dogtags."

The way Kasumi cringed at him was obvious from her tone, in spite of the fact that between her mask and her hood, he couldn't see her expression. "Oh, Shep."

"There's still a chance," he insisted. "If he's not here, not on this ship. He could still be okay."

"And if he isn't, where does that put him?" Tali asked pointedly.

"MIA." He'd take missing in action over killed in action anyday; at least missing in action implied there was still something to be found.

EDI came back over the comm after a few seconds of tense silence. "I am not detecting any signs of an Alliance RFID, Shepard."

Thank God. "Alright. Thanks." Then he wasn't on the ship, or Horizon. If he'd been on the ship before, then he must have been moved somewhere else. Maybe past the Omega 4 relay already. There was still a chance, right? There had to be.

"Do we keep going?" Kasumi asked. "I dunno, Shep. Something doesn't feel right."

Nothing about the mission felt right anymore. "Yeah, we'll keep going. We still need to find some kind of main access terminal so we can link this bird up to EDI and get the data that ol' Timmy's looking for."

"But where are the bodies of the dead Collectors?"

"You can't pick up a husk on a scan designed for straight-up organics either," he pointed out. "Assume this is a trap, be on your guard, and keep moving."

\---

Not much later, they found a pile of human corpses.

"Oh, God..." Kasumi sounded like she was going to be sick; Shepard hoped she knew the consequences of doing something like that in a breather mask or helmet, and hoped she knew how to keep herself from doing it. "Why would you even _do_ this?"

The bodies were mangled almost beyond recognition; Shepard could see track-marks from injections, but only barely. It was more obvious that some of them had been cut open and hastily, sloppily put back together, if they'd been put back together at all. Hair had been hacked off, limbs fell at awkward angles that implied broken bones or dislocation. Many victims still had their clothes on. Most of their expressions were frozen in agony. For a few, rigor mortis had set in, but for others, exposure to the cold vacuum of space had prevented it.

"They must have been used for testing," Tali said dispassionately. "If they were a control group, they would have been discarded at the end of the experiment." She sounded detatched. Shepard could get behind that. Detatchment was the only way to not be absolutely disgusted and mortified.

He was pretty sure most had to either be dead or mutilated beyond the point of usefulness before they'd hit the pile, though. "A control group for something really fucked up." He nudged at one of the bodies near the edge of the pile with the toe of his boot. "This is like a schoolkid's animal dissection project gone horribly wrong."

"You dissected animals in school?" Shepard could imagine Kasumi's nose crinkling in distaste behind her mask.

"Yeah, but only a worm back in primary school. Didn't get too much further than that." He forced himself to look away from the body-pile with a little shudder, wandering over to a nearby console that stuck out jarringly against the alien geometries of the ship itself. The console was still alien looking, but it looked less like something made by overgrown wasps.

Not too far off, there was one of the pod-things that had been on Horizon. Shepard wasn't surprised to see it; it was only when he glanced at it to see what was inside that he did a double-take.

"Uh, Kasumi? I think I found one of those dead Collectors you were looking for."

Both women turned to look, but Kasumi was much more hesitant in her approach. "Do I want to know at this point?"

Shepard gave the dead Collector in the pod a once-over; it was as mangled as the human corpses had been, though the mangling seemed to be more purposeful. Like an autopsy rather than an anatomical study. "Not really," he answered, redirecting his attention back to the console to see if he could boot it up. "Tali, help me out with this thing."

"Right." The Quarian woman was at his side in a moment, omni-tool already out.

Meanwhile, Kasumi was inching over to peer cautiously into the pod, and jerked back when she saw the extent of the damage. "That's sick. They do this to their own kind?"

"Them doing it to humans is pretty sick too," Shepard pointed out.

"Yeah, but it's easier to think it's okay when it's another species. Not any more right, but easier. This... this is just. I dunno, Shep."

"The Reapers are a part of this. Maybe it's because of what I've seen, but I don't find this all that shocking knowing they're involved."

"So this is the kind of thing the Reapers can reduce an advanced species to?"

He nodded grimly. "Tip of the fucking iceberg, but yeah. Now you're getting it."

When Tali interrupted them, he was honestly kind of glad for it. "I'm in," she said. "Patching through to the _Normandy_ now."

Good. Maybe they could get off that damn boat before they got ambushed or something. "What've we got, EDI?"

"This console is not connected to the central computer," the AI informed him politely over the comm. "It is likely you will need to proceed further into the ship to find one that does."

"Fan-fucking-tastic." He turned away from it and started back down the corridor they'd been headed through before their little distraction, gesturing for the two women to follow. "If there's anything interesting on it, you'll have to tell me later. Otherwise, if it isn't mission-relevant, me'n the girls are gonna keep moving."

"Understood, Shepard."

 


	13. back to the wall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Good job pissing off the last best hope for the galaxy there, Reapers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Edits by JJ, with a few more done by me after the fact when she pointed some shit out to me that I hadn't realized I was doing. This is what I get for writing things in separate chunks instead of doing it all in one long uninterrupted flowing session. 
> 
> I'm still sorry these are taking so damn long you guys.

"Keelah..." Tali breathed. Looking up, Shepard realized what it was she was swearing at.

They had stumbled into a massive inner chamber of some kind. Above their heads, around them, over them, probably even below the platform they were standing on, were thousands upon thousands of the same stasis pods they'd seen on Horizon. Maybe even millions. Shepard couldn't even begin to count them.

"They could take every human in the Terminus Systems and _still_ have room for more," Kasumi said. Shepard had to agree with her assessment.

Tali had a certain disbelieving horror in her tone when she spoke again. "Shepard, they're going to target Earth."

"I doubt that," Shepard said, but if he were to be honest, he wasn't nearly as sure of it as he sounded. The Collectors might not target Earth, but the Reapers certainly would. And it'd all be because a human, one human, had scared them by taking out Sovereign.

If anything hit Earth, it'd be his fault.

Kasumi lingered for a moment, glancing around nervously, before darting back to Shepard's side. She stuck a little closer to him, standing just a few feet off from his left side. "I don't like this," she muttered.

He nodded. To say he was nervous would be an understatement. Nothing had happened, nothing had jumped out of them since they'd arrived. But now that they were deep in the belly of the proverbial beast and cut off from their shuttle, they'd be hard-pressed to get out if anything _did_ jump them. It'd be too easy to pin them down. There was only one way out, and that was back the way they came.

As they pressed on, the comm came online again, and Shepard perked at the sound of Joker's voice. "Teddy, you've gotta hear this, man--"

"Spit it out, Joker," he snapped, his voice far sharper than he'd intended for it to be. Joker was unfazed as he continued.

"I had a hunch, so I got EDI to check something out for me, and-- go ahead, EDI."

When EDI cut in, she sounded almost... worried? Something like concern was filtering in through her simulated voice, and the very sound of it put Shepard even more on edge than he already was. "I compared the EM profile against data recorded by the original _Normandy_ two years ago. They are an exact match."

A chill went up Shepard's spine. "Bullshit. The same ship being on my ass for two years?" The same ship that took Kaidan?

Shit. He had suspected before, but there was his proof. Kaidan had been taken because of his association with Shepard. He was fucking bait. The Reapers wanted Shepard either turned into a puppet or dead.

Taking a deep breath, Shepard shook his head like that might help to clear it. "This can't be a coincidence."

"Just be careful in there, Ted," Joker said. It made Shepard feel a little better to know that Joker, safe on the bridge, was as tense as he was. This was a bad situation all around.

"Let's double-time it, people," he said to the two women, and the three of them picked up their pace.

\---

Shepard knew from the second that he'd plugged EDI into the Collector networks that something was very, very wrong. Then the platform he and the girls had been standing on started moving.

Stumbling, he tried to reach down to activate the magnetic field generators in his boots without falling on his ass. "A little help here, EDI..."

"I am having trouble maintaining the connection. There is someone else in the system."

Well, shit.

Distantly, he could hear the massive ship around them rumbling to life, systems activating and turning on by themselves. As he got back fully to his feet with the help of his mag-boots - and as Tali was helping Kasumi up after the both of them had landed on the unsteady floor with a lot of clumsy flailing - he was already pulling out the Collector rifle that he'd borrowed from Zaeed.

// _We are the Harbinger._ //

The voice boomed through his mind, like it was echoing against the inside of his skull. It wasn't over any comm and it wasn't travelling through the impossibly-thin atmosphere of the ship. It was in his head, like Sovereign had been. Like it had been on Horizon.

He registered other platforms moving towards theirs before he even really saw what was on them, and instinct took over for fear. "Get down!" he shouted, grabbing Kasumi by the shoulder and yanking her behind the console as he threw up a biotic barrier. Just in time, too, because a split second later, a Collector's particle beam was cutting the air right where her head had been.

// _Assuming direct control._ //

Shepard glanced up to make sure Tali was alright - for an instant he was relieved to see that she had taken cover just as he had, that she was fine and her shields were holding - and that was the moment a Warp not his own tore through his barrier so quickly that he could feel the feedback of it through his amp and his implants. Shit. Shit shit _shit_.

"Tali, drone!" Needed to draw their fire. Needed a distraction. Shit. Shouldn't have brought the girls. Should've brought Grunt or Zaeed.

"On it, Shepard!"

He waited until he heard the little beep of confirmation that the drone was active before he popped back up again, reinforcing his personal barrier with little more than a thought as he unloaded a salvo of suppressing fire on their attackers. That, along with a quick Warp, took out the first possessed Collector he saw, plus a couple of other mooks. But by the time he was already dropping back down again because they'd chewed through Tali's first drone, another minion was already being possessed to take over for the first.

"EDI, gimme some good news!" he shouted over the comm. Next to him, Kasumi activated her cloak; he heard an Overload go off along with her victorious laugh, followed closely by a yelp as her shield got grazed and she had to duck back down.

"I am simultaneously fighting Collector firewalls in over eight thousand nodes. I am tasked to capacity." He could swear the AI sounded annoyed with his request.

But there would be time to consider that later. He emerged again once he could get his barriers back up without overloading his amp, and fired another volley at the collectors. Zaeed's gun was doing its job admirably, tearing through Collector hides like they were made of cheap Batarian plastics (certainly burned as easily as Batarian prefabs tended to).

A singularity followed up with a warp brought down another three Collectors by blowing them off their platform with the ensuing dark energy explosion. The gun tore through another Harbinger-possessed drone. Kasumi kept up the overloads and covering fire with her SMG, while Tali deftly switched between her shotgun and drones; it honestly seemed like she would be halfway through fabricating a replacement with her omni-tool by the time one was active with how quickly she was able to get another running again after one failed.

// _If I must tear you apart, Shepard, I will._ //

Bullshit. He wasn't gonna be torn apart by a few fucking mooks. Not then. Not ever. If this son of a bitch wanted to tear him apart, it'd better do it in person. Commander Theodore fucking Shepard wasn't about to get done in by minions.

Then Zaeed's gun overheated, his gloves being the only thing keeping it from searing his palms, and he was forced to drop it with a curse.

Fate wanted him to have a hard time? Fine. He pulled the sniper rifle from its holster and extended the barrel, hefting the awkwardly large weapon up and onto the top of the console he was taking cover behind. It was hard to wield, and harder still to look down the sights with his helmet on.

Shepard aimed, and took the first shot with the unwieldy rifle. The head of the Collector he was aiming at exploded into bloody chunks.

Life being set to hard mode had never stopped him before.

\---

Ol' Timmy had set them up. That son of a bitch had knowingly sent them into a trap.

The supposed distress call that had originally lured them there had been a fake. Timmy had known it was a fake; there was no way he couldn't have. Shepard had felt off about the whole mission, and it was good to know that there was a reason beyond his usual paranoia. Not that knowing why he'd been right to be paranoid made him feel better about the usual backstabby Cerberus bullshit.

Still, once EDI had fought her way through the nice little Reaper hacking attempt and Shepard had fought his way through a few waves of Collectors with the girls, they had at least gotten the information about the Omega 4 relay that they needed to continue their mission, so the whole thing wasn't completely pointless. Now they just had to get the fuck out of the giant Collector ship before it sawed the new _Normandy_ in half like it'd done with her predecessor.

"I'll be happy if I never have to see another of those Praetorian things again," he said, slapping a new thermal clip into the borrowed sniper rifle. The gun had certainly come in handy with its high velocity armor-piercing rounds. A few of those right in the eyes, along with a couple of Warps, and that Praetorian had gone down before it could even hope to get its barriers back up.

But Shepard was down to his last clip; he'd let the girls take the bulk of them since they were so much more reliant on their guns. His amp seemed fine so far - EDI had pulled through on that, thankfully - but he couldn't really know whether it was overheating or not until it was already doing it. That was the thing about electronics. They tended to work fine right up to the point where they were fucking up past the point of repair.

At least that's what they did for Shepard. That was probably part of why tech was never really his thing beyond your basic hacking and decryption, come to think of it. Kaidan had always given him the blandest looks when he swore that the Mako had caught fire on its own...

No. He didn't need to be thinking about that. He had to get himself and the girls back to the shuttle.

He vaulted over the very charred and battered console he'd been using as "cover" and landed on the other side clumsily. Artificial gravity was back to full power then. He could probably get away with turning off the mag-boots, but at the same time he felt better with them on. He didn't trust these Collectors to not dick with him. "Kasumi, still got suit pressure?"

"Yep. Only took out my shields for a second with that last shot." Kasumi was standing a few yards off, straightening out her hood. It looked like she was considering putting away her gun for a brief moment, but just before it reached the holster she thought better of it and tucked it between her chest and left elbow as she activated her omni-tool. "They're closing doors as fast as EDI can get them open for us, Shepard. We should get moving."

"Just a sec," he told her. He turned to Tali. "Hey, Tali? Got your drones working again yet?"

"I won't be able to manufacture any more until we get back to the ship." Her own omni-tool interface was flickering, and Shepard could imagine her frown as she waved her arm to try and get it to stop doing it; the gesture was probably a holdover from the days of smacking electronics to jar the bits back into place, which was still a thing one might have to do on some ships in the Migrant Fleet. "Damn. That Warp earlier might have overloaded a few circuits."

Statements like that only ever managed to make him worry. "Is your suit okay?"

"If it weren't then I wouldn't be breathing, Shepard," she replied. She gave up on the omni-tool with a resigned sigh, pulled out her shotgun, and shrugged at him. "Lead the way."

Shepard looked to Kasumi, and the thief nodded quickly. "Right," she said, turning on her heel and starting off again down a corridor with her omni-tool out and her SMG back in her hand. After all, she was the one with the map.

For several hundred meters they simply kept going. They'd taken out a good chunk of the resistance, and they were in the home stretch. Things looked okay. Just a few dozen more meters.

Joker's voice came over the comm. "Might wanna double-time it, Ted. You know, before they blow the new _Normandy_ in half?"

Just a little further.

He heard the husks before he saw them. Or maybe he imagined that he heard them. Maybe he felt them, somewhere in the back of his mind; maybe he'd been poked at by Harbinger and Sovereign enough that he could feel things like that. All he really knew for certain was that he knew they were there before they rounded the corner and came into view.

Kasumi didn't. She ran right into them. Her gasp cut into Shepard's ears over his comm; they were coming at her and zeroing in on her before she could activate her cloak.

It felt like time itself ground to a halt as his mind raced to try and come up with possible solutions. Planning. Strategizing. But there was no logic to be found, not when one of his girls was in danger. Not when the danger was husks. Faced with that, his usually rational mind threw logic out a window and went with pure batshit crazy.

In theory, Shepard knew how to perform a biotic charge. Barrier, mass-accelerate, let the shockwave from the displacement and resulting sonic boom do the work for you, then biotic stasis field to absorb the kinetic energy of deceleration so you don't shatter every bone in your body. He had never actually tried to do it before, because it was the kind of thing he categorized as a desperate move of the highest order. He left that kind of insanity to vanguards, since he had a sneaking suspicion that those death-seeking adrenaline junkies secretly got off on the danger and risk involved.

When he slammed into that clump of clawing, wheezing husks with what had to be at least a thousand newtons of force, he was not thinking in a way that most would consider sane. He was thinking about the time a husk had ripped a chunk off of Kaidan's hardsuit and left a four inch gash over one of his shoulder blades. He was thinking of that happening to Kasumi, with her thin suit in near-vacuum. And he was thinking that he wasn't going to lose one more person to these Reaper-controlled bastards.

Not one more.

When the charge landed, his barriers were still at full strength. He only took a split second to glance over and make sure Kasumi was clear - that her shields were still up and she was safe - before he blew those barriers and sent the remaining husks flying. The ones that weren't blown apart or smashed by the force of the nova itself had everything still resembling a skeleton shattered when they hit the walls.

He only took a second for himself to breathe before he was running again. To the shuttle. To the _Normandy_. The girls followed, just as eager to get out as he was.

That moment was when he stopped thinking of the mission to take the fight to the Collectors as a rescue mission.

 


	14. broken sword of justice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things aren't okay. But he's gotten pretty good at pretending they are.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lil faster this time, with an assist from morphia@ao3/morphia-writes@tumblr doing the beta-work again. Catching misspellings and typos because she's excellent at that and I don't use Word so I don't really write with a spool-chucker like I should. I hope I'm not too bad at writing Miranda. 
> 
> Picking up Samara next, with Jack and Zaeed in tow.

"What the hell were you _thinking_?"

Miranda was livid. Usually Shepard would be a bit more smug about that, or at least amused. Making her mad - pushing her buttons - was just one of those things he found endlessly entertaining. Pressly had been a similarly good source of sadistic giggles for Shepard's inner troll. Maybe it was an XO thing.

As he sat in the med bay with his armor and undersuit stripped off and Chakwas scanning a fracture in his right forearm, though, he couldn't find it in himself to be amused. The only emotion he could dredge up was apathy.

"I'm sorry, who is it that calls the shots on missions? On this ship?" He gave Miranda a sharp look, narrowing his eyes. "Because last I fucking checked, it isn't you."

"Shepard, you tried to perform a biotic charge. I shouldn't have to remind you that your body just isn't made for that. Your implants, your cybernetics, your muscle weaves-- they're made for an adept, not a bloody vanguard."

"I should note that I succeeded in both the biotic charge and saving our thief, which makes your argument kinda moot."

"You could have turned every bone in your body to powder, Shepard!"

"Probably."

Miranda gawked at him. " _Probably_?" She got a little twitch by the corner of her eye. "Do you just not care about getting yourself killed?"

Chakwas looked up from her work. "Miss Lawson, if you would be so kind as to stop badgering my patient, I could continue my work much more efficiently."

Shepard leveled a flat look at Miranda as the XO glared between him and the medic. When he only raised a brow at her, she made an aggravated noise and turned on her heel to storm out without another word.

He wasn't glad to see her go, but he didn't miss her presence either. He felt like he was just... well, existing.

"She worries about you, you know," Chakwas said more gently, injecting the medigel and letting the muscle and bone weaves bring it to its target. He hadn't started feeling the break until he was back on the ship and the adrenaline had worn off, but even then he hadn't really cared about it. Actually after the adrenaline had worn off he'd felt a bit like a walking bruise, but he hadn't cared much about that either.

He didn't really care much about anything at that point. "I'm aware."

Chakwas glanced up to meet his eyes, raising a brow. "We all do."

"I know, Karin."

"Do you? Because sometimes you make me wonder." She removed the syringe just as he was feeling the cool rush of relief in his arm, the swelling and discoloration from the break already fading a bit. "Nothing else is broken, and there doesn't seem to be any internal bleeding. I'm assuming you landed with your right arm?"

"Yep."

"That would explain the fracture. Vanguards undergo repeated microfractures when they practice and train, which strengthens their bones. You've had none of that, nor are your cybernetics designed with the intent to compensate for it."

"I knew the risk. I didn't care." He slid off of the end of the bed and landed heavily on his bare feet. He still didn't care. He'd even do it again if he had to. "Am I fit for duty now?"

Chakwas pressed her lips together in a tight, disapproving frown. "Technically? Yes. But it's my professional recommendation that you speak with Miss Chambers when you have the time. You're beginning to show a pattern of risky behavior that I'm not sure I approve of."

"Noted." He picked up his undersuit and threw it over his shoulder to carry it as he headed for the door. He'd come back for the hardsuit later. Right then, he figured he could use a shower.

He probably wouldn't be going to talk to Kelly though. He knew exactly what was wrong with himself.

\---

The warm water of his shower helped to soothe the quiet throbbing pain of his bruises, but did nothing for the dull ache in his chest. That was fine; he hadn't expected it to. He wasn't stupid. He knew what caused it, and he knew just as well that it wasn't about to be fixed.

If he were to describe it, he'd say it was like reaching for something that just wasn't there. An emptiness. Quiet, subtle, but always there. Always nagging at the back of his mind whenever he went to take what had been there before in his hands and found himself grasping at thin air. Yet he kept reaching, like poking at the hole where a missing tooth had been with one's tongue. There was a space that had been occupied without him realizing it, and it had taken having the thing taken away for him to figure out how hopelessly dependent he was.

He went through all the motions of getting clean and scrubbing away the day's exertion, but the relief was minimal. He felt a little better physically, but that was it. Turning off the water and drying off afterward wasn't any better. Shaving didn't help either. All of it was habit. He couldn't even really care about how tired he looked in the mirror.

What did he want, really? What would make things better? Revenge? No, he wasn't so petty as to believe that vengeance would make him feel better for very long. It hadn't worked for Zaeed, or Garrus. All it had done was taken a bit of the weight off their shoulders and left them unsure of what to do with themselves.

The only thing he could say he wanted, really _wanted_ , was to have Kaidan Alenko back.

Hey, honesty hour, right? That was what he wanted. Yeah, he knew how stupid it was. He knew how pointless that particular wish had become. And even if he had it, he didn't know what he'd do with it. Date the guy? Pff, as if the great war hero Ted Shepard knew anything about dating. He barely knew what to do with his own feelings, let alone being partly responsible for someone else's. He knew even less about what to do with another man. Likely he'd just embarrass himself if he tried it.

Nah, it'd be enough just for Kaidan to be okay. Didn't even need to be friends anymore. Shepard would be fine with distance. He'd even be alright with being hated, hell. Resentment was something he knew what to do about.

Anything was better than nothing. Shepard didn't know what to do with an empty void except watch his footing and try not to fall in.

He pulled on a shirt, some old-fashioned khakis, and a pair of comfy boots. Even as emotionally drained as he was, he knew that trying to sleep would just lead to staring at the ceiling if he failed, and bad dreams if he succeeded. No rest for the wicked, or so the saying went. He headed into the elevator and ended up on the crew deck almost out of habit.

Almost, because part of him wanted to talk to Kasumi. Or Garrus. Or, hell, _someone_. Anyone. Just to get his mind off of things, even if only for a little while.

He didn't expect Miranda to be that someone. She spotted him as he came out of the elevator, and flagged him down.

"Shepard. May I have a word with you in my office?"

Why did he feel like he was about to get scolded like a naughty schoolkid who'd been drawing dicks on his desk? He sighed, shrugged, and decided it couldn't hurt. "Sure. Why not." His feet scuffed against the deck slightly as he walked, betraying his mental exhaustion.

Her office was clean, like always. Everything was in its place. Her bed didn't even look like it had been slept in. He tried to imagine her having just woken up in the morning, but couldn't. He could only ever picture her as she presented herself - prim and proper. Maybe that was part of why he enjoyed bugging her so much.

She settled into her chair, all poise and grace with her back straight and her hands clasped together in front of her; the way she moved reminded Shepard oddly of how Liara had, how both of them were always so dainty. But while Liara's appearance of being calm and collected would shatter the moment one mentioned Protheans or ancient civilizations or just about any kind of xenoscience - making her seem so much more normal and adorable in the process - he had never really seen Miranda get excited about anything, or even allow herself to cut loose and be normal.

He'd seen her let herself feel before, and he'd seen her emotional. Angry, sad, hurt? Yeah. But thrilled? Happy? Nah. Never.

Just once, he'd like to see her completely lose it over something she liked. "I'm guessing this is about earlier?" he asked.

"In a manner of speaking." Miranda scooted her chair closer to her desk; when she leaned forward, Shepard was again left to wonder how the hell her tits didn't fall out of her top. "Commander... I know it isn't my place to judge, nor is it really any of my business."

Oh. He could see where this was going. She was gonna get on his case about Kaidan. Because of course she was. Hell, he'd get on his own case about it. There were regs about that kinda thing. "If you've got something to say, then say it."

She eyed him for a moment. "...Very well, then. Shepard, are you certain that this affair of yours with Miss Goto is entirely appropriate, given the nature of our current mission?"

Shepard blinked. Then he blinked some more. "What."

"The visits to your quarters? Your frequent trips to the lounge? How often you take her on missions? How much freedom you allow her in places such as Illium and Omega? I'm not blind, Commander. I can see how close you two are, and I can see how much of a priority her safety is for you."

Uh. "Miranda..."

"As I said, I'm not judging you, Shepard. The _Normandy_ isn't an Alliance vessel, and Cerberus doesn't have any policies that discourage fraternization--"

"Miranda, I'm not sleeping with Kasumi."

It was her turn to be surprised. "You're not?"

"No. No I'm not." But honestly, considering this wasn't the first time someone had made an assumption like that about him, he should've seen it coming. It was like having friends was weird or something. "It's flattering that you think I've managed to warrant that kind of attention though."

Miranda frowned, going over his words in her mind. He could practically see the cogs turning in her head. "I see."

"Not interested in you either." For the record. He figured he'd better make that clear.

The faintest smirk tugged at the corner of her lips. "I never implied that you might be. But that does leave a few questions unanswered."

"Such as?"

"For one, why the sudden blatant disregard for personal safety coming from a man so well-known for playing the chessmaster?"

She had been bound to ask eventually. His gaze fell away from hers in favor of staring at his own feet, wiggling his toes inside his boots. "A lot of reasons."

"Hm." Miranda steepled her fingers and leaned forward over her desk, nodding to herself. "When you were on the ship, you made a rather odd request of EDI as well. Something about the RFID in a set of Alliance dogtags?"

"Yes."

"Do you mind if I ask what that's about?"

He considered. If he just said yes, then she would likely drop it. She'd find out later on her own, but she'd at least drop the subject for the time being. On the other hand, if he told her - here and in confidence - he ran the risk of it being used against him. So much risk. So much potential for manipulation either way.

But he'd lost everything they could hold over him, hadn't he?

"Staff Commander Kaidan Alenko was stationed on Horizon, but he wasn't on the colony after the Collector ship left. I was having her check to see whether or not he was dead on that ship." Shepard sucked in a breath. "If he was, maybe I'd have something to bury. The closure would be nice."

She blinked as she absorbed what he'd said, and something about her expression turned just a bit softer. "Shepard, I'm sorry to say this, but--"

"I know," he said before she could finish. He didn't think he could deal with hearing it just then. "You don't have to remind me."

Miranda nodded slowly. "For what it's worth, I'm sorry for your loss. From what I've read, you two were good friends."

He looked up then, his eyes catching hers. He didn't say another word; all he did was look at her. If she was as smart as he thought she was, then she'd pick up on it without him having to say anything.

And she did. "Oh... _oh_." The shift in her features was subtle but Shepard could see how the shock turned to horror, and how that horror turned to sympathy. "I had no idea. It-- there wasn't anything about it in your files."

"There wouldn't be."

"Ah. Because of regs, right--"

"No. Because nothing happened. It, uh." Shepard averted his eyes again out of embarrassment. "It's one-sided as far as I know."

"Oh." Miranda was back to frowning, looking completely baffled. It was a lot of information to process, to be fair. None of it was anything that Shepard made a habit of broadcasting, either. His closest friends saw through him, but that was because they were his closest friends. They knew him. Tali, Chakwas, Kasumi... hell, even Liara had seemed to understand. He wouldn't be surprised if Zaeed had caught on too and just not mentioned it.

Miranda though? She didn't think about that. Probably didn't have all that much experience with it. Possibly even less experience than Shepard himself had. "It won't have any effect on the mission, Miranda. Don't worry."

She scrutinized him intensely for a few moments before settling back in her chair with a nod, crossing one leg over the other and straightening her top out with a little tug at the material. "Fair enough. If you feel your judgment won't be impaired, then I won't report anything about this to the Illusive Man."

Shepard's brows rose questioningly. That wasn't a thing he had expected to hear. "Going all rogue agent on me?"

"No, but I do know how much you value your privacy. EDI mentioned how you've managed to disable the listening devices and hidden cameras in your quarters." She smiled sweetly. "I'm assuming you enlisted Miss Goto's help for that?"

"Naturally. Late nights talking shop with Kaidan and Tali didn't teach me how to find bugs, just how to break into them. Or, y'know, break them."

"I see." Her arms fell delicately to the armrests of her chair, giving her a sort of artfully draped look. "As I recall, you've also expressed concerns about Cerberus using your friends and those close to you to manipulate you in the past. I would like to mitigate those concerns wherever possible."

He smirked at her. "And it doesn't feel even the slightest bit satisfying to go against your boss like that?"

She smiled right back, betraying absolutely nothing. "I'm sure he would understand my reasoning under the circumstances."

Right. Sure. Because that obviously wasn't the reasoning of someone who was going against what their boss would want. "Just you wait, sweetheart, you'll be subverting authority with the best of us before this mission's through."

 


	15. a whip and a witch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hey, he was able to go almost a whole day without thinking about it! That's something, right?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope this chapter, after the feels of the other ones, makes people smile. 
> 
> Beta by Jupiter_James@AO3/JupiterJames@Tumblr, because she's fantastic.

He didn't like that Zaeed's room was filled with cigar smoke, but he liked coming down to talk to Zaeed. Bit of a dilemma there.

Still, after chatting with the Illusive Man - apparently their next official assignment was to go check out a dead Reaper, and fuck if that wasn't the most unappealing idea that anyone had ever presented Shepard with - he needed to chill. Cool down. Think about something that wasn't fucking Cerberus for a change and just relax. He was pretty sure that Chakwas would agree with that particular bit of self-diagnosis. She'd probably cite hormone levels and blood pressure while she was in the process of agreeing, but she'd still probably agree.

And he didn't want to talk to anyone who would be gentle with him either. His life might be a fucking train wreck, but that didn't mean he wanted to be coddled. Much as he loved Kasumi and Tali, the girls had a much gentler approach to comfort than he needed.

So he went down to chat with Zaeed and Jack in the hold, with the hum of the engine providing a soothing aural backdrop and Zaeed's cigars somehow managing to smell calming even if they made Shepard's eyes water as they talked about anything that came to mind while the _Normandy_ was on her way back to Illium.

"Vandalism?" Shepard found himself asking, raising an eyebrow at Jack. She was cross-legged on her bunk, while Shepard was leaned against her makeshift desk with his palms flat against the rickety surface. Zaeed was propped against a bulkhead, one leg crossed over the other.

Jack grinned. "That's what the Hanar call it when you crash that space station I mentioned into one of their moons and make a new crater. They really liked that moon."

"Pfuh. Hanar. Useless on land." Zaeed shook his head. "So goddamn slow, can't do a thing with them tentacles. Get 'em underwater though... I was doin' a gig once with this up-an'-coming Krogan outfit. Leader was a cocky bastard, can't remember the name. Not important. Anyway, so these sons of bitches found themselves an eezo deposit on some godforsaken ocean-world. Fifteen hundred meters down, pressure that could crush a man's ribcage like an eggshell..."

Shepard listened. So did Jack. He hadn't asked what Jack thought of Zaeed's stories, but she never seemed to mind listening to them, and she didn't seem like someone who would pull any punches when it came to telling an old merc to shut up either. He could only assume she was fine with Zaeed, just like he could only assume that she was fine with his own visits.

She hadn't complained so far. That was enough.

"That, erh," Zaeed gestured in Jack's general direction with his cigar, his brow furrowed as he wracked his brain to find the right words. The pause in the storytelling snapped Shepard out of his thoughts. "That little trick of yours, Jack, with your ammo. You don't mod your pistol, or your shotgun."

"Nope." Jack smirked wickedly, tugging her pistol from its holster and holding it up to the dim red light of the hold for all to see. "No mods here."

"An' yet your shots pack as much punch as an armor-piercer." Zaeed took a drag on his cigar, following it up with a puff of smoke from his nose. "That a trick you picked up from some Eclipse girls or somethin'?"

Jack's nose crinkled and she waved her gun dismissively at the old merc, stowing it again so she could properly flip him off. "Fuck you, old man. I figured this shit out on my own."

Zaeed tipped his head down to give her a hard look. The muscles in his face might be shot all to hell, but his mismatched eyes were more than expressive enough to make up for it. "Figurin' it out is one thing, sweetheart, gettin' the idea in the first place is a whole nother thing entirely."

Her jaw shifted, and her eyes darted warily between the two men. "...Alright, fine. So I picked up the idea from a Turian, big fuckin' deal. What's it to you?"

Both Shepard and Zaeed shared a glance. It had been Zaeed who had helped Shepard mod his Carnifex pistol for armor-piercing, and Shepard could see that the merc had an idea. He could also hazard a guess as to what that idea was.

He raised an eyebrow at Zaeed, and the merc responded with a lopsided smirk and a faint nod. Then both of them turned their attention back towards Jack, and it was Shepard who asked the next question. "Could you teach it to somebody else?"

"To you? Sure." Jack shot Zaeed a glare that wasn't the least bit convincing; even in the low light, it looked like she was fighting hard against the urge to grin (Shepard could relate, since it was hard as hell to dislike Zaeed when he was being a charmingly grumpy old uncle figure). "Not to him though. Gotta be a biotic for warp shots."

Shepard pulled up his omni-tool to give it a brief glance. "We've got a couple hours to kill before we hit Illium to pick up that Justicar. You up for giving me a lesson?"

The toothy grin Jack gave him in answer was positively feral. "Got somewhere on this boat where we can fire a gun without the cheerleader bitching at us?"

"Wouldn't be the first time I've set up a firing range in the shuttle bay," Shepard replied. Nor would it be the first time an XO had yelled at him for doing so. Ahh, Pressly. Those were the days.

Zaeed barked a laugh. "I'll get Vakarian so we can make sure you two kids get set up properly. Knowin' your aim, Shepard? End up with a hole in the goddamn hull otherwise."

\---

By the time they got to Illium, Shepard was fairly confident in his ability to do the "warp ammo" thing that Jack had taught him. He couldn't manage it with armor piercing shots, but he did find out that shooting a warp shot into an existing singularity or pull field where he was already fucking with physics would create a neat little explosion, similar to how a proper focused warp would, except on a smaller scale and with the added benefit of bullets.

Miranda had gotten a little bit annoyed at him for misusing the shuttle bay, but he couldn't be bothered to care about it. His mind was on other things anyway. They had to recruit that Justicar - he was pretty sure her name was Samara? - and to do that they had to find her. Some digging around Nos Astra, which may have involved another quick visit with Liara, told him that the Justicar he was looking for was hunting a fugitive who had gotten wrapped up in an unsolved and messy murder.

It had all the makings of something that could get both morally iffy and dangerous, so he went ahead and brought Zaeed and Jack along with him. They were good for morally iffy and dangerous.

Everything seemed to be going well, from speaking to the poor detective who had been saddled with this bullshit, to chatting with the business partner of the murdered Volus, to talking to a few dock workers who were tired of having Eclipse mercs wave guns at them. In fact, it all seemed to be going a little too well, at least to Shepard. Yeah, maybe he was paranoid, and a murder mystery wasn't exactly a smooth operation to begin with, but to him it seemed just a bit too clean.

Once they were past the police line and facing off against the first band of mercs, Shepard quickly found that his paranoia was completely justified.

Shepard had shitty aim; that was the first problem. Give him a scope and a couple seconds' worth of distraction time to aim with and he'd do fine, but with the bog-standard Carnifex pistol - he couldn't practice Jack's warp ammo trick as well with the high-velocity armor piercing rounds from the sniper rifle - his strategy became "everyone stand back because I'm going to shoot in the general direction of the thing until it falls over" which wasn't exactly the best method to use when surrounded by unlabeled, unidentified cargo containers.

It didn't take him long to clip a pressurized valve accidentally and send one of those cargo containers farting around the room propelled entirely by the high-pressure gases stored therein.

Zaeed had the presence of mind to duck and stop trying to throw grenades, because God only knew what that thick, dark red smoke coming out of the rampaging pressurized tank might do when ignited. A Salarian in Eclipse colors who had been valiantly attempting to hack said grenades - which weren't actually hackable, because Zaeed used the old fashioned pin-pull type of grenade that was just straight-up incendiary fuckery - got beaned in the head by the damn thing, which probably snapped the poor bastard's neck on impact. Meanwhile, Shepard jerked back behind a bunch of stacked boxes and plastered himself flat against the nearest solid wall, because _fuck that noise_.

Thus it was Jack who was the only one who actually had the balls to do something about it. Muttering a string of profanities that made Shepard feel somewhat proud of her, she flung her hands forward and conjured a stasis field around the runaway storage tank as it soared mere inches past her head, effectively halting its forward momentum. Then she made a gesture that closely resembled the sort of motion one would make to crush an orange between their hands, and the walls of the tank were smashed inward with a last puff of dark red gas from the many resulting integrity failures.

Shepard was thoroughly impressed. Also somewhat turned on, and damn if his hardsuit didn't make that uncomfortable.

"Nice aim, jackass," she called out to Shepard, before unleashing one-woman-wrecking-crew levels of chaos on the remaining (stunned) Eclipse mercs. Cargo containers were getting flung into people. People were getting flung into cargo containers. People were getting flung into people. It did not help Shepard's awkward adrenaline boner in the slightest.

The second problem became apparent when he realized that Jack, standing smack in the middle of a cloud of red gas, was glowing a hell of a lot brighter than she normally did. And as it dissipated into the air, Shepard caught a whiff of it himself, and it wasn't long before he could feel the rush and tingle along his nerves of a building flare. He also started to feel vaguely lightheaded.

If asked later, he wouldn't be able to adequately say whether it was the drug in the air or the blood having already gone southward and away from his brain that slowed his reaction time down. Either way, it wasn't until Jack started giggling like a crazy person and she was visibly bleeding from her nose that Shepard thought to peel himself away from the wall he'd been glued to, running forward into the cloud to grab her by the arm and pull her back.

"He~ey!" Jack protested, still giggling. Her pupils were blown wide, and her eyes were bloodshot. "S'havin' fun!" Dark energy licked at her skin still; she wasn't bothering to keep a lid on it.

She shoved at Shepard's hand to try and dislodge his grip on her arm but he stayed firm, dragging her out of the thick red smoke. He could feel it in his head, fogging up his thoughts like breath on a window even as he felt his heartrate spike. Could feel his pulse in his fucking _fingers_. Some kind of biotic-boosting drug? Probably.

Shit, he felt a trickle coming from his own nose too. Didn't have to look to know what it was. And nosebleeds after that kind of short-term exposure were bad news.

Zaeed eyed the pair of them; being the only non-biotic of the lot, he looked as if he barely felt a thing. Or maybe he was just that used to drugs in general because he was that much of a badass. "You two kids all right?" he drawled.

"Should be." Jack was slumping in Shepard's grip, but her biotics had already stopped flaring up randomly. Shepard's own had faded to the occasional twinge, though his heartrate was still higher than he was comfortable with. Senses hadn't stopped being muddy yet either. He looked up at the scarred merc and tried to keep a straight face even though the color of the man's armor reminded his slightly blitzed brain of bananas. "Got any spare breather masks?"

A glint of amusement came to the merc's mismatched eyes; Shepard belatedly realized that his statement had slurred together, sounding more like _godennyspurbreefnmass_ than the more sensible thing that he'd tried to say. "Just the one. I'd be willin'a bet the detective has some though."

Shepard nodded. If she didn't, she was running one helluva shitty operation. "Then that's where we go." That's... where we go. That's where we are going? That's where we're headed? How did words work again? Christ, he was so blazed. Were his teeth tingling?

He let Zaeed lead the way back. Partly because he didn't trust himself, and partly because he kept zoning out due to one thing or another and almost dropping Jack. The two cops stationed outside the police line gave them funny looks when they returned early, and Shepard had to grin at them even though the fading high was starting to give way to the beginnings of a headache.

"Don't do drugs, kids," he said to them. They didn't laugh, which - to his still-loopy brain - meant that they were lame no-fun-having nerds. Kaidan would've laughed, but the dumb bastard wasn't there. So he was a lame nerd too, for not being there. That jerk.

Ah, shit. And there he'd been able to go almost a whole day not thinking about it. Damn drugs.

\---

"Goddamn," Zaeed mumbled under his breath, slack-jawed and staring. Shepard ended up nodding in agreement, because yeah. Hot damn.

Samara - at least he assumed it was Samara - had just floated down and snapped a merc's neck, calm as you please. Cool, serene, inhumanly elegant. Tall, with heels that made her look taller. Legs for days. Jawline and cheekbones that could cut marble. Strikingly white-blue eyes. And a body he could probably bounce marbles off of.

If he tried, she'd probably snap his neck too. Somehow that made her even hotter than having the biotic control and practice to be able to fucking _float_ already had.

She turned those icy eyes on him and he straightened his posture to try and look taller.

"My name is Samara, a servant of the Justicar Code. My quarrel is with these Eclipse sisters, but I see three well-armed people before me." She approached with the grace of a cat, her footsteps nearly silent as she gestured calmly to Shepard's squad. "Are we friend, or foe?"

Shepard tugged off the breather mask he'd gotten from Detective Anaya; the action gave him time to form a response more intelligent than what would come off of the top of his head. He always felt stifled in those damn things anyways. "Commander Theodore Shepard, and honestly? No skin off my ass if there's a few less amoral mercs in the universe."

"A _hem_." Zaeed cleared his throat meaningfully, throwing Shepard a sharp look.

In response, the former Alliance biotic just snorted. "You're not amoral so you don't count."

Zaeed nodded. "Uh-huh. Right. Sure."

"Ass-kisser," Jack muttered. Shepard elbowed her in the side.

"Then for the moment I have no quarrel with you, Commander Shepard." Samara bowed her head respectfully, and Shepard nodded in turn out of a desire to not get his neck snapped for breaking some ancient Asari custom or something. "How may I be of service to you?"

He sucked in a breath. Well, might as well be honest. "Okay, this is gonna sound crazy, but we're looking for capable people to come along for what's looking like a suicide mission against the Collectors."

Samara blinked but her expression only barely shifted. It was unsettling to Shepard, who was so used to being able to read people. "I sense the truth in what you say, and it humbles me," she said. Her voice was so soft as to sound gentle even though Shepard knew she was anything but. "But I seek an incredibly dangerous fugitive."

"Okay?"

"I cornered her here, but the Eclipse sisters smuggled her off-world. I must find the name of the ship she left on before the trail goes cold."

"Ah." Even if he couldn't really tell anything else about the woman, it didn't seem to Shepard like she was lying. Not telling the whole truth? Maybe. But not purposefully misleading him. Somehow he got the feeling she wouldn't do that. "The detective back at the port told me that if you didn't come with me, she'd have to take you into custody. Her superiors don't want any, uh... incidents."

"I see."

"She also said that your code prevents you from allowing that." Shepard peered at tall Asari, wondering at her intentions. Marvelling at the sheer insanity of a code like that. "I'm not gonna try to take you by force. It's your call. I mean, I'm sure you can handle a few cops."

"She risks a great deal by following her orders, yes. However, my Code permits me to cooperate with the detective for one day." Was that the ghost of a smile on her face? No, couldn't be. "After that, I must return to my investigation. I would be compelled to take action."

Oh good. So the crazy warrior monk code wasn't entirely without sense. Or maybe Samara was just bullshitting. Shepard couldn't tell, and it bugged the hell out of him. "I could probably get the info for you. You still don't have to come with me if I do, but I'd rather avoid a bloodbath if possible either way." He smirked at her. "Consider it an act of good faith."

Samara nodded solemnly. "Do this for me, and I will join you. Then the Code will be satisfied." He had started to notice that she didn't blink much. Partly because their eye contact had turned into a subconscious staring contest on his part. His eyes were beginning to water slightly.

"That easy, huh?" Shepard gave a low whistle. "Whoever you're hunting should be flattered that they're worth pledging yourself to a crazy suicide mission for."

The Justicar's expression suddenly went quite cold. Shepard could swear that the temperature in the room had dropped a few degrees. "I am sworn to hunt her, Shepard. If I suffer for it, I will accept that."

He grinned. "Well, here's hoping you never end up sworn to hunt me."

She didn't smile back, and he found himself wondering what the hell he'd gotten himself into.

 


	16. the dreams fade before the dawn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ted really just sort of wishes he could skip sleeping entirely sometimes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> aaaAAAAAAAAhhh AO3 won't let me copypaste formatted text, crashed the browser repeatedly whenever I tried
> 
> I had to view it as an HTML and then copy it into the plaintext box instead of my formatted RTF
> 
> This chapter has already given me enough trouble, but this is just a fucking mess
> 
> AO3 FIX YOUR SHIT

Heart hammering away in his chest, Shepard jerked upright out of bed, breathing hard and coated in a sheen of sweat. He swiped a hand across his forehead, brushing away the strands of hair that had gotten stuck there.

He hated dreaming.

He hadn't even liked it in the days before the Prothean beacon had infodumped the collective genetic memory of a dead race into his head; back then it was just whatever his fucked up subconscious could conjure up, and having seen little kids die of frostbite turning to gangrene after the heat goes out in a bitterly cold winter - while being at the ripe age of about twelve himself - he had a pretty goddamn creative subconscious.

After Eden Prime though, his subconscious didn't even need to do any work to come up with something horrifying. It just sifted through the nice assorted memory pile, plucked one out, shook the cobwebs off, and put it on the reel for Shepard to relive like an old vid show rerun. He'd thought that maybe he would've gotten used to it by now, or that maybe dying would've prompted a shift in priorities for his subconscious mind to focus on, but nope. Reapers and death.

He thought about telling people sometimes that his fear of the Reapers wasn't entirely his own, and that even in death, the ghosts of the great Prothean empire still clung to their terror. Then he realized just how stupid that was when people already thought he was crazy. Even his closest friends doubted him, save for the ones that had been with him when he'd spoken to Sovereign; he could see it whenever they discovered a new terrible thing and those in his inner circle reacted with shock and horror instead of grim resolve.

Garrus understood. Kaidan had too. Aside from Liara, who had seen the inside of his head, they were the only ones that had really gotten it.

Well, okay. Kaidan hadn't really gotten it. He'd been in the process of wrapping his head around it the last time Shepard had spoken to him. Doing that running-his-hand-through-his-hair thing and looking at anything but Shepard, except when he did look at Shepard he'd do it with those goddamn sad eyes, and...

Shit. No. Wrong thing to be thinking about first thing in the morning.

( _"And that's what's been in your head this whole time?"_ )

No. Not thinking about it. Nope.

( _"Shepard, I'm sorry."_ )

Shepard cringed, and pressed his palms against his eyes until he saw stars behind his lids. Fucking useless brain.

A few seconds passed like that before he pushed himself out of bed, shaking his head quickly like it might help to clear his thoughts somehow. It didn't. Nothing would. Everything was another reminder of that damn hole he was trying to avoid. Kasumi was right about him being hopeless, and it sucked.

He cleared his throat and raised his voice without looking up. "EDI, what time is it?"

"Zero-four-hundred hours and twelve minutes, Shepard," the AI responded calmly, as if she'd been waiting for him all night. He wondered what she did in the off hours. Normal people looked at porn or baby koala vids. They played games, or dicked around on messengers, or kept extranet blogs about long-dead classical novelists. What did ship's AIs do? "Mordin mentioned that he would like to speak with you whenever it becomes convenient."

Shepard nodded to himself, heading for the shower. "He still up?" Could bring up Grunt's newfound habit of headbutting the walls while he was down there, maybe see if Mordin knew anything about it.

"Yes. He has in fact been awake for more than an hour."

Crazy genius scientist bastard. Shepard felt himself smiling at the sudden thought of the _Normandy_ having a mad scientist instead of a captain's pet. "Forty-five minutes and I'll be down in the tech lab to meet him."

"Understood, Shepard."

He'd added a few minutes to the estimate on purpose. Maybe a quick jerk in the shower - followed by a stop by the mess to grab a snack - would help clear his head.

\---

In the end, it didn't help. But, hey. His stomach had something in it. That was something. Even if it was just a stale muffin.

Small victories, right?

Right, okay. Time to talk to the mad scientist.

As EDI had predicted, Mordin was still in the tech lab by the time Shepard got there, bent over his equipment in the middle of the room. The Salarian didn't perk up like he usually did when Shepard came into the room, nor was he bursting with his usual questions and curiosities that Shepard found weirdly adorable and endlessly intriguing; in fact, he looked quite grim.

"Ah! Shepard. Glad you stopped by." He didn't seem glad. He seemed nervous. "Have a favor to ask. Know you're busy. Defeating Collectors, preparing for mission. Can't wait, too important."

The excited babbling left Shepard blinking a bit. "Alright, spit it out."

"Former colleague from genophage modification project, named Maelon. Last seen headed to Tuchanka." Mordin inhaled sharply. "Hasn't come back."

Oh good, another distraction. Still, he wasn't about to poke a dead Reaper without his whole crew being ready for it; Mordin needed to have his mind on the mission. "Okay Mordin, I'll bite." A Salarian going to Tuchanka was risky even without the project painting a target on their head. The Krogan didn't exactly take kindly to being sterilized. "Got any leads? Tuchanka's a big planet." It had high gravity too, if Shepard remembered right. Ugh.

"Would suggest speaking to clan leaders. Might know where Maelon went. Where he might have been taken."

"Then we'll make a quick detour and go to Tuchanka." Shepard had a feeling that if they didn't, Mordin would leave and go there alone anyway. That couldn't be allowed to happen. For one, he needed the mad bastard around. For another, he was pretty sure Mordin going off on his own would just result in two dead Salarians instead of one dead and one missing. "EDI, tell Joker to chart a course to Tuchanka after we've refuelled at Omega."

"Of course, Shepard," the AI responded. Yeah, he was fairly sure she didn't actually have anything resembling a need to sleep.

Mordin smiled with his weird scarred frog-mouth. "Much appreciated. Thank you."

Shepard shrugged it off; it wasn't the kind of thing he felt he needed to be thanked for. "Can't hurt to look. Besides, an old friend of mine is on Tuchanka last I checked. Wouldn't mind the chance to say hi, maybe get some headbutting in for old times' sake."

"Am admittedly surprised you agreed so readily." The old Salarian grinned. "Expected confrontation, conflict."

"What, because of the disagreements we've had on the genophage?"

"Indeed. Disputes often lead to humans being--"

"Dumbasses? Jerks?" Shepard supplied. "Fuckwits?"

"--difficult," Mordin finished. "Yet you encourage dissent, reasoned debate. Very strange."

He couldn't argue with that. "I like it when people are willing to stand up to me."

"Such thinking undermines command structure. Breaks chain of command." Mordin frowned, lifting a hand to his chin and tapping one finger against his face. "Should be chaotic."

"And is it chaotic?" Shepard had to suppress the urge to grin again.

"Not as much as simulations suggest." The Salarian seemed to consider a moment more - Shepard might've heard him mumble something under his breath, but couldn't say for sure - before shrugging and returning to his many, many lab instruments. "Food for thought. Need anything else?"

"Well, Grunt's headbutting the walls."

"Hm. Behavioral instability?" Mordin activated his omni-tool, tapping out a few commands. "Unsure what might be the cause. Vitals well within Krogan norms."

Just another reason to stop off at Tuchanka then. Maybe it'd be best to leave figuring out what was up with his tank-baby Krogan to other Krogan. "Alright, well. Thanks." Shepard started to leave, turning and heading for the door.

He was stopped by Mordin having something else to say. "Shepard! Before you go, should inform you. Found information on Collector ship. Not useful, but intriguing. Might interest you."

Shepard paused in the middle of the doorway, then sighed as he twisted his body and craned his neck enough to glance back at the old Salarian scientist. "Yeah, doc?"

"Found heavily modified Prothean genetic sequences in Collector cell structure. Thousands of years of mutation, tampering, yet structure is unmistakable." Mordin beamed, like he was showing Shepard a new thing he'd found to pick apart and play with. "Collectors were once Prothean."

What little color there was to be had suddenly drained from Shepard's face. His insides lurched, and he felt a bit sick. "They're husks," he breathed. His voice sounded small to his own ears.

That explained how eerie the ship was. How familiar it felt, at the same time that it seemed utterly alien. He'd been on ships like it a hundred times over in his dreams. Vast, magnificent Prothean dreadnoughts, all gleaming surfaces and alien geometries that somehow made sense in the memories of the dead race that had built them.

Saren's solution - to merge with the Reapers, to appease them and bow to them so that lives might be spared - led to Collectors. There was no longer any doubt in Shepard's mind as to how completely batshit insane that was.

He was seriously regretting having eaten breakfast.


	17. interlude

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Let's hear it for Aria, who isn't having any of Ted's shit today.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lil faster this time, but still not that CHAPTER A DAY thing I had going on for a bit. pleasedon'tkillme.
> 
> Really this is just a pit stop. I wanted to write some Aria, so I did. If y'all don't like the filler though, lemme know. I'll... well I can't make any promises but I'll take it under advisement. 
> 
> BTW, Ao3's still doing that browser-crash thing. Had to paste the HTML again. I'm gonna give it another look through for formatting errors. Morphia@AO3/morphia-writes@tumblr was the beta, give her lots of hugs.

Shepard had lied just a little when he'd mentioned the detour to Omega. He'd technically been planning it for a few days already. Like it or not, even Miranda had to admit to the merits of the Omega black market in terms of both price and selection. Besides, Mordin had a new thing he wanted to try with the amps for both Jack and Shepard, and it'd be stupid to use his small stockpile of actually good amps to test something that might backfire if it wasn't tuned right. Waste of perfectly good credits.

He wasn't all that worried about himself or Jack getting hurt by it though. Even if they did, they had some of the best on-board medical facilities and the most significant stockpile of supplies that he could get the  _Normandy_ set up with. He'd made sure of that. Plus if shit were to be sent in the direction of the proverbial fan, the worst side effects still wouldn't be horrible and debilitating. 

Much as Mordin wanted to try the ideas that had horrible and debilitating potential, Shepard wasn't going to let him anywhere near them. It was like when the old Salarian randomly asked him if humans had two livers.

Anyway, Omega. Aria's playground, and a kind of candyland for morally iffy people. He left the ship to Miranda and set off towards Afterlife with Kasumi and Zaeed in tow. Kasumi because he couldn't care less who she decided to steal from in a dive like Afterlife, and Zaeed because he was intimidating enough to look like a scary bodyguard. Honestly, Shepard had enough trouble just being himself after Elysium, but then the Council debacle had happened and that led to a lot of bullshit from people he didn't want to deal with.

He could've brought Garrus but he didn't trust the Omega mercs to not have grudges against him. He could've brought Grunt too, but Grunt was still pretty obviously a baby Krogan whose plates hadn't quite grown in yet. Thane simply wasn't intimidating, Jacob was a softie, Samara would get hit on and might divest people of whatever hands happened to touch her inappropriately. Jack might get mistaken for a stripper, which could only end badly... the list went on.

So, Zaeed and Kasumi it was.

"I like the seedier places," Kasumi said, sighing wistfully. "They always seem so much more lived in."

Shepard raised an eyebrow, and Zaeed scoffed. "Huh. Always figured Omega t'be a bit of a shithole, myself," the merc drawled.

"But it's a shithole with character-- just look at that graffiti!" The thief gestured at a nearby wall, covered in some kind of illegible scrawl. "Modern art at its finest."

"It's in Turian, sweetheart. It could say 'call for a good time' for all you'd know."

"It's expressive, it's..." Kasumi's face pinched up in a frown and she whipped out her omni-tool. "Oh, fiiine. I'm translating it. Happy?"

"Better." Zaeed smirked. "So what's it say?"

She paused, peering at her omni-tool. "It says..." Suddenly she jerked back, her mouth twisted with something like revulsion. "Eugh. Well alright then."

Shepard grinned wide. "Done appreciating the modern art, Kasumi?"

Kasumi smacked one of his shoulderguards. "Hush, you."

Thus, all three of them were in decently good moods when they walked into Afterlife.

\---

"Aria, my wonderful lavender vixen queen!" Shepard said as he ascended the steps to Aria's private balcony, arms held out wide. "Magnificent goddess of--"

"The hell do you want this time, Shepard."

Shepard smirked, and Aria did not. He let his arms fall to his sides as he took the last few steps, and she kept hers spread over the back of her massive couch. He knew that this was her territory. She knew that he was an intruder of the highest order.

She hadn't had him hauled out yet though, so he figured she saw a use for him. Or that she was at least curious enough to see what the purpose of his intrusion was. He knew her type. "Just in the neighborhood," he told her, holding up his hands in a gesture of surrender. "Took a couple relay hops to get in the neighborhood, but y'know. Par for the course there. Figured I'd check in while I was here, see how my second favorite Asari's doing."

Aria T'loak was unimpressed. "Is your favorite a stripper or something?"

"Nah. She's a cute little piece over on Illium." Shepard thought of Liara - thought of how offended she'd be at being described as such - and his smirk became a proper grin at the thought. "Why, getting jealous?"

"I'm not even sure you're worth getting jealous over by human standards." Aria's expression was just shy of something Shepard would call a sneer. The contempt she had for him was obvious in the same way Miranda's had been at first, yet somehow he found Aria to be a lot more intimidating. "If you're here to make problems for me, you'll have to get in line. Otherwise, stop wasting my time."

Zaeed grunted; he was observing from a position of being leaned against a nearby wall, his stance lazy and unconcerned. Kasumi had either wandered off to go pocket-diving or was hanging out cloaked nearby, but that was fine. Shepard figured that the merc could probably take either of Aria's guards in his sleep. "Sounds like you've got a problem or two that needs fixin'," he said over the din of the nightclub.

Aria truly sneered then. "Don't act like you know what's going on, Massani."

"Oh I know Omega, beautiful," the merc rumbled, low and dangerous. Aria narrowed her eyes, and her left hand twitched against the back of the couch.

Part of the trick, really; Shepard chose that moment to step in. "Hey now, everybody just chill, alright?" he said, getting in between the two. "Let's keep it civil."

The Asari let out a joyless laugh. "Look at the soldier playing the politician."

"Someone's gotta." He grinned. Yeah, it was a game. He was pretty sure she knew it as well as he did, just like he was pretty sure from Zaeed's wry smirk that the scarred merc wasn't insulted. The game was all about appearances, but the only one whose appearance needed to be maintained was Aria's. She was damn lucky that Shepard agreed with her policies, otherwise he wouldn't be making the effort. "But something tells me that my friend here isn't wrong."

"Not entirely," she conceded. The corner of her lips quirked upward. "You offering to fix my problems, Shepard?"

"I'm offering to listen to them."

"And if I happen to hear that those problems have been somehow miraculously resolved after you've so graciously listened to me?"

Shepard shrugged. "Humans all look alike, right? Could be any kind-hearted soul who happens to overhear the conversation."

"How generous of you," she said drily.

He beamed at her, bowing his head respectfully. "I aim to please, your Majesty."

Aria groaned. "Ugh. Now I know you're trying to piss me off."

\---

It turned out that Aria's problem was an old Krogan she called Patriarch. A few Blood Pack rabble-rousers were making pointless threats. What Aria wanted Shepard to do was to get Patriarch out of harm's way.

What Shepard did instead was pull the "and you call yourself a Krogan" card and get the big guy to fix his own damn problem, headbutting him and getting roared at and headbutted in turn because calling a big old Krogan a coward is asking for trouble. After that, Shepard had a nice welt on his head.

The best cure for head welts was medigel, but he didn't want to waste the medigel. The second best cure was alcohol. Down there in the basement floor of the club? Plenty of alcohol to go around.

The first floor's bartender was a Turian - grumpy, but generally amused by the tiny pale human who would drink pretty much anything if he was told that it'd be too much for him to handle - but down there in the loud and smoky basement the bartender was a humorless Batarian who gave Shepard a withering look.

"What'll it be, human?" the bartender growled out, baring his sharp teeth. Shepard wasn't particularly intimidated; he'd been shooting Batarians since the Blitz.

"Got any long island iced tea?" he asked. The Batarian's lips pulled back in a snarl. "Guess that's a no. Strongest shit you've got short of ryncol that isn't dextro."

The bartender gave Shepard a toothy grin. "Coming right up," he said, voice dripping with false pleasantness as he turned his back on Shepard to get the ingredients.

Now, Shepard didn't know drinks all that well. He just didn't pay attention because he was less a habitual drinker and more a "it's there so why not" drinker. He had preferences, one of those being rum and soda, but apart from that he tended to not question whatever it was that was handed to him. Questioning it would look like weakness. And in the case of that particular night, with the  _Normandy_ still refueling and a couple hours of time left to kill, he still had a headache that he'd like very much to go away.

He probably should've been paying attention to whatever that Batarian served him. He should've taken one whiff and promptly put a gun to the guy's head. He didn't. He gave a little nod, handed over the credits, and downed the whole glass in one go.

The last thing he thought of before he crumpled to the floor - he heard Kasumi yell, heard Zaeed mutter a curse - was that it tasted even more godawful than Batarian mixed drinks usually did.

\---

Shepard woke up on a very different floor with an even worse headache, and initially he was just confused.

Where was he? He could hear the club's music still, but it sounded like it was coming from far away, or at least from the other side of a thick wall. Oh, and there was Kasumi.

"Nnh," Shepard stated oh-so-intelligently. "Wuzzuh. Mmgh."

Kasumi blinked. "Oh! He's waking up. Thank God." The thief patted his cheek and it did nothing for his headache. "Welcome back, Shep. Had us worried for a sec there when you just collapsed."

"Miss Goto here saw you staggerin' before I did," Zaeed rumbled nearby. "Got your arse outta there before that Batarian's buddies could do anythin'."

Shepard sat up, winced, then immediately brought his hand up to his mouth as he fought against the urge to vomit. Kasumi reached out to steady him; she was kneeling just a few inches away. "Yeah, you're a lot heavier than you look," she said with a little smirk.

"S'the cybernetics," Shepard slurred. Once his head had stopped spinning he decided he'd go ahead and risk more dizziness by looking up at Zaeed. "Wh'happened?"

Zaeed looked... bland? Bored? It also looked like there were two of him. Hooray for disorientation and double vision. "My money's on some kinda poison. Lots'a reasons for a Batarian to have a grudge against humans."

Shepard had to agree. "Or a grudge against me," he added, and Zaeed nodded.

It seemed Kasumi was slightly out of the loop though. "Wait, why would a Batarian have a grudge against Shepard? Humans in general maybe, but Shep specifically? They're not even a Council race."

"Shepard's a goddamn war hero, sweetheart," Zaeed explained. "Saved Elysium by lightin' a fire under the locals' arses and gettin' the lot of 'em armed and pissed off."

"Not a hero," Shepard insisted. He was slowly getting his faculties back in order. "It's just that nobody else was doing jack shit."

Kasumi blinked slowly, turning back to Shepard to blink a bit more at him once she'd processed it. "You're  _that_ Shepard too?"

For a second, Shepard was a little surprised. "What, you didn't know about that?"

"Well, no? I guess I just didn't put it together, but... Wow." Kasumi's thoughtful look became a frown. "Yeah, definitely a reason for that guy to poison you."

"Great. Thanks for the vote of confidence."

"I'm just saying! Jeez." Kasumi huffed, stood up, and reached her hand out to help Shepard up; he took it without a word of complaint.

The world spun a bit while he took the time to re-orient himself again, taking a steadying breath and letting things go quiet except for the noise of the club off to the side. Normally, he would give people second chances. But that Batarian? Nah. Something about it all made it seem like this was the kind of shit that guy pulled regularly. If he had been figuring his dose by what a normal human who wasn't a cyborg freak could take, that'd mean that he'd either had time to figure out what that dose would be or he'd looked it up in anticipation. That suggested it was premeditated to some extent.

Aria might get mad at him, but that was all right. He could handle her anger. And he figured she'd be happy to be rid of a poison-happy bartender anyways.

"Hey, you okay?" Kasumi asked him.

Shepard gulped heavily and took another breath. "Yeah." He really wasn't, not yet. But he sure as hell would be.


	18. fatigue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Are we sure Ted's human? Because he's seeming more and more like a small, pale, squishy Krogan.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HI GUYS BEEN A WHILE  
> have a filler chapter. Nargh. Proofing by PotionsMaster@AO3.

Aria was appreciative of Shepard "dealing with" the poisoner. She was thankful for his handling of Patriarch's situation, even if it wasn't how she would've gone about handling it. She still kicked him out the minute his ship was fueled for being a walking trouble magnet though.

Considering the credits she'd wired him under the table were enough to pay for his refueling ten times over, he was more than okay with the arrangement as he headed for Tuchanka.

Ahh, sunny Tuchanka. Home of the Krogan, thresher maws, and whatever else was stubborn and dumb enough to survive a couple of nuclear winters having compounded the already harsh climate. Seriously, Shepard was considering just covering himself in sunscreen from the neck up. Haestrom had been bad enough, but Tuchanka's radioactivity made him half-tempted to say "fuck it" and wear his full hardsuit the whole time, to hell with the atmosphere being breathable.

In the end he decided on the sunscreen instead because helmets sucked ass, but made a mental note to poke Chakwas when he got back so she could do a scan. Just to be on the safe side. He was already at a higher risk for skin cancer, brain cancer, and just plain cancer in general. Even if that shit was easily treatable, he didn't feel like tempting fate.

When it came time to pick his squad, he decided to bring five people with him in the shuttle instead of the usual two. It was a little crowded on the way down - especially with Grunt grumbling and stomping the whole way - but Shepard liked to think he knew the Krogan after having worked with two of them and shot a couple dozen or so more, and he wasn't going to take any chances with them. So aside from the baby Krogan he had Jack, Kasumi, Zaeed, and Mordin with him as well.

The locals gave them landing coordinates, and EDI dutifully piloted the shuttle to where it needed to go remotely. The doors opened and Shepard had to fight the urge to cough at the sheer amount of dust hanging in the air as he stepped out onto the landing pad, his squad following behind him. Mordin and Kasumi stayed close while Zaeed and Jack flanked Grunt to keep the young Krogan from causing any trouble. A few older Krogan sneered at them as they passed, some in Blood Pack colors and some with clan colors that Shepard couldn't place.

One particularly big local fellow in thick armor with a shotgun the size of his forearm approached their landing party and held out a hand in the universal gesture for  _stop_ . "Human. We heard you were coming, but few welcome your arrival."

"Didn't expect them to," Shepard replied, sizing the big guy up. Scarred and barrel-chested like most Krogan Shepard had seen, with gouges in his head crest from what was probably centuries of asskicking. Shepard figured that even with as polite as the towering Krogan was being, he was probably one of the ones who didn't like that there was a dead human Spectre on his planet. "Got a reason for holding me up, Tiny?"

The Krogan snarled but didn't rise to the bait. Apparently he was one of the rare well-behaved ones, even if he kept glancing at Mordin in the same way one might look at a dead bird that their cat had dragged in. "The clan leader wishes to speak with you," he growled. "I suggest you finish your business here quickly, and keep your rutting pet on a leash."

His rutting pet? Shepard blinked, glancing back at his squad. Grunt was kicking at the dirt and grumbling about the place of his ancestors being a dump, Kasumi had gotten distracted by someone's unattended pile of shiny knives, Zaeed and a Blood Pack merc were glaring at each other, and Mordin was fussing over Jack's amp with his omni-tool while Jack swatted at his hands and told him to stop pawing at her. "Y'mean, uh. Grunt?" That was his best guess.

All he got in response was a snort before the big krogan grudgingly stepped aside to let them pass, and Shepard continued forward into the crumbling ruin that was apparently this clan's base of operations. His squad followed along behind him with varying amounts of haste; he was briefly reminded of a clump of ducklings toddling along behind their mother, and the thought made him snicker.

Well, except for Kasumi. He sort of had to turn around and go back to drag her along by the arm just to get her away from the shiny things.

\---

Somewhere along the way as they proceeded deeper into the compound, Shepard lost track of a fair chunk of his squad.

Kasumi was the first to wander off, presumably on the hunt for something valuable that she could carry back to the ship without powderizing her spine in the process. Zaeed spotted a group of rowdy locals shouting about a dogfighting match and got distracted by that (and while Shepard didn't approve of dogfighting in the slightest, he had to grudgingly admit to himself that if he was going to allow Kasumi to steal shit then he should probably let Zaeed have his sick brand of fun too if he wanted). And Mordin? Shepard had no idea where Mordin had gotten off to.

Nothing for it except to hope that they didn't get themselves killed. Or that they'd at least have the sense to say something over the comms if things got messy. Shepard was pretty sure they could handle themselves, but hey. They were his friends. He was allowed to worry, alright?

Thus he approached the raised platform (or rather the caved-in bit of ceiling that had sunlight streaming in from above and a pile of rubble on top of it loosely resembling a seat of authority) where a handful of big armored Krogan were arguing with Grunt and Jack to either side of him with the intention of talking to whoever was in charge. He hardly expected the one in charge to be someone that he knew.

"Wrex?"

The old, scarred Krogan looked up from his argument. "Shepard?" Beady red eyes widened, and that massive head turned.

Shepard had to grin. "In the flesh."

Urdnot Wrex let out a booming laugh. "Pfahah! Shepard!" He shoved past his fellows to stomp over to Shepard, taking the small human's wrist in a near-crushing grip for a handshake. "My friend!" Shepard returned the gesture to the best of his ability.

Then he used that same gesture to pull the old Krogan into a hug, something that Wrex was more than happy to reciprocate. There was much back-patting (kinda rough on Wrex's part, but Shepard was used to it) and hearty chuckling before they drew away to get a good look at each other. Two years for Wrex, barely a month for Shepard. Yet for Shepard that month had started to feel like a lifetime. God, he'd missed the sour old bastard.

"You look well for dead, Shepard," Wrex rumbled. "Shoulda known the Void couldn't hold you."

"Oh, it tried all right. But you know me." Frankly, Shepard was amazed he wasn't getting more questions on what dying was like from people. He had countless bullshit descriptions and explanations for them if they ever did ask - just to dick with them - but no one was asking. It was mildly disappointing. Here he'd thought it'd be a prime opportunity to troll folks. "I see you're doing well for yourself. Clan leader, huh?"

"Somebody's gotta beat these pyjaks back into line. Clan Urdnot's just the start." Wrex beamed proudly. "When I'm done, the Krogan are gonna be one people again."

The other gathered Krogan didn't seem too happy about it though. One of the bigger ones, his armor trimmed with blue and painted with clan colors Shepard didn't recognize, spoke up. "You abandon many traditions to get your way," he sneered.

Wrex's mouth twisted with something like annoyance a second before he turned and headbutted the dissenter. "Speak when spoken to, Uvenk," he grumbled. "I'll drag your clan to glory whether it likes it or not."

That was apparently the end of the argument. Shepard knew better than to think that the jackass would back down that easily, but he also knew better than to say as much to Wrex when said jackass was still within earshot. "Guess that means you're too busy to tag along for one last crazy suicide mission, huh?"

The old Krogan chuckled. "I'm sure you'll do just fine without me, Shepard," he said. Then he shifted to get a look at Jack and Grunt, and that alien smile became a broad grin. "Besides, looks like you've already got a Krogan with you."

Grunt's attention snapped back to the gathering and he stopped kicking at the dirt in order to straighten his posture and jut out his chin defiantly. Shepard decided it was best not to let him speak when he was in that kind of mood. "That's Grunt. He's a little twitchy lately. Got any idea why?"

"Lemme get a look at him," Wrex said, moving back to sit on his makeshift throne. He made a beckoning motion to Grunt, and the young Krogan dutifully came forward - after Shepard gave him a nudge - with relatively minimal grumbling.

Shepard sincerely hoped that his grumpy baby Krogan wouldn't cause a diplomatic incident. For Wrex's sake if nothing else.

\---

Wrex confirmed what Shepard had quietly suspected: that Grunt was just a typical Krogan kid going through the hormone-soaked process of growing up. It explained why Mordin hadn't found anything, because there wasn't really anything to find.

For some reason it was really weird to think of Grunt reaching sexual maturity though. Probably had something to do with how having the young Krogan around reminded him of taking care of other kids back home, but this was one of those things Shepard just didn't want to think too hard about. That train of thought would likely take him towards his attatchment to his crew, which would only make the suicide mission harder on him in the end.

He was helping them so they'd have their heads on straight for it, but helping them was only making him more attached to them. What if his own head wasn't on straight when the time came, and his judgment ended up impaired?

Actually if he were to be perfectly honest with himself, his own head hadn't been on straight since Horizon. That probably made everything a moot point right there, didn't it?

Jack and Grunt tagged along behind him as he wandered around the old compound. Everyone else was still MIA, although he had guesses as to where they'd probably be. Even if he didn't have a very good mental map of the place yet, he still knew his crew. Mostly. As he ascended yet another set of crumbling stairs, he thought of something that had been said to him a long time ago about all the stairs you have to climb to get to a place of importance being symbolic. The memory made him smile even if it reminded him of his grief.

Right. Whatever. He needed to talk to the clan shaman. Something about a rite of passage.

When he got to the upper level and opened the door using the flaky haptic interface, he found himself surrounded by big, grumpy Krogan. They wore various clan colors and all sorts of clothes, some young enough for their plates to have barely grown in even while others were old enough to wear battle scars that rivalled even Wrex's. All of them went dead-silent and turned to look at him as he walked in.

Shepard steeled himself. It wasn't like he hadn't walked into tense situations before. A few Krogan didn't scare him. "I'm looking for the shaman of Clan Urdnot," he said, sizing up the room's occupants. The one with the bright armor from earlier was among them; he looked scandalized. "One of my crew seeks to undertake the Rite and become a full member of the clan."

Was that authoritative enough? Apparently so, as one of the better-dressed Krogan in the room stepped forward. "I am the shaman of Clan Urdnot," he answered in a deep, booming voice. His eyes didn't quite focus on what was in front of him; Shepard suspected that he was very old. "Have your crew member come forward, human."

Grunt did so, looking for all the world like a schoolkid that was about to get scolded. The shaman ambled up even closer to peer at him, confirming Shepard's suspicions that the fancy-dressed Krogan was probably either old or just going blind. Probably both.

The brightly armored Krogan from before harrumphed and stormed over. "This whelp is tank-bred! He is the product of a syringe, not a true Krogan; we do not even know if the beasts of the Rite will take notice of him!" Bright-Armor Guy shouted in protest.

The shaman leveled an unimpressed look at Bright-Armor Guy - that was what Shepard called the jackass in his head at that point - and leaned in to sniff Grunt. "This tank-bred smells as a Krogan should. Your protests ring hollow, Uvenk."

Bright-Armor Guy glared at the Shaman, and then at Grunt; he seemed to ignore Shepard. Shepard didn't like being ignored. "Wrex has given us permission to seek clan status for Grunt," he said.

"Permission? Pfah!" The shaman smirked down at Shepard. "Your claim is valid, if lacking in spirit."

"If this must stand on ritual, then I invoke a denial!" Bright-Armor Guy bellowed. "My krantt stands against him! He has no one!"

No one? Shepard's hand clenched into a fist and his biotics flared. The word  _krantt_ was confusing his translator, but he understood the gist of it. "Grunt has me," he said. "When he has me, he has my crew."

"A crew is not the same thing, but I grant you aliens your simple interpretation," the shaman conceded.

Bright-Armor Guy shot Shepard a dirty look. "Aliens don't know strength," he growled. "My followers are true Krogan! Everything about this 'Grunt' is a lie--"

That was the point where Shepard got tired of Bright-Armor Guy's shit and headbutted him.

What better way was there to deal with beligerent Krogan? Sure enough, it shut the mouthy fuckwad right up. Even as his head throbbed, Shepard grinned at the dumbfounded look on the bastard's face.

"You wanna run that whole denial by me again, Uvenk?" Shepard said. Ow. Maybe he needed some medigel. "Or would you rather subject the whole room to the sight of you getting your face smashed in by a weak alien?"

The shaman let out a booming laugh. And as it was followed by more snickering and muttering from the other Krogan gathered in the room, Shepard knew he'd won.


	19. storm and fire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everyone's crazy and nothing hurts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Smooooosh. I thought they might kiss but they didn't. AH WELL.

The old shaman drove Shepard, Jack, and Grunt out in an ATV to something he called the Hammer. To Shepard it looked like a skyscraper-sized version of the things sometimes used in geological and archaeological surveys to figure out what was under the ground using sound waves. In this context though, he was reminded more of the thumper devices used in Dune to summon the sand worms. Somehow he didn't picture the Krogan as being particularly interested in geology.

Grunt had the rocket launcher and the Claymore shotgun that was modded for incendiary shots. Jack had an Eviscerator shotgun and her biotics. Shepard had his Carnifex, the Mantis sniper rifle, and even more biotics. He'd figured that would be enough firepower while still not being so much that they ended up negating the whole point of this Rite thing, and the old shaman had agreed.

The Hammer smacked into the ground once and its vibration was enough to rattle Shepard's bones. He wasn't intimidated by the pack of varren that followed; none of them were. Varren weren't a threat, they were an annoyance. Hell, Jack took out four of them with one shockwave.

"Hey, Shep! You're gonna need to tell ol' Doc Mordin that his upgrades work!" she crowed as she threw another varren into a wall when it tried to pounce her, and Shepard had to agree with her when he followed it up with a warp and the resulting biotic explosion made his ears pop even from several meters away. Grunt was engaged with a half dozen of them, alternating between punting and shooting the things.

Smack number two from the Hammer woke up some... Uh, Shepard didn't really quite know what they were, but they were bug-things and they blew up if you hit 'em just right. Catching three of them in the same singularity and watching them flail around ineffectively for a minute before a single warp-shot from Jack caused a series of explosions that knocked a crumbling pillar down was  _fun_ though. Varren were at least smart enough to move with some kind of coordination. These things reminded him more of giant stink-bugs, though they were a little harder to squish.

A staticky loudspeaker droned on with some bullshit about traditions and what it meant to be a true Krogan, but Shepard didn't care. Two waves in - two rounds of things summoned with that hammer - and he was in his element. None of them had more than a few chemical burns, and even that was mitigated by armor for Shepard and Grunt (and barriers for Jack).

They were ready for whatever the hell this Rite would throw at them. Feeling confident, he hit the old-fashioned and partly corroded button that would activate the Hammer a third time. The final round, according to the shaman.

The weight rose, and rose, and rose further. When it came down, the force of the blow against the ground nearly knocked Shepard off his feet, and he had to catch Jack by the arm to keep her from stumbling as well. Then he quickly realized that the ground beneath their feet hadn't stopped shuddering yet.

Fuck, he hated being right. "Move!" he shouted. About a half-second later, a thresher maw broke through the parched earth and reared its head.

The last time Shepard had faced a thresher maw, it had been in the Mako. He'd had the vehicle's armor to protect him, and if Kaidan couldn't keep the shields working then there were always straight-up biotic barriers. This time, he could hear the sizzle of the maw's acidic spit when it hit the pillar he'd barely had time to duck behind, and the acrid smell made his eyes water.

Grunt apparently thought that this would be a fine time to charge. Hefting the large missile launcher like it weighed about as much as a cardboard box, the young Krogan bellowed a battle cry as he ignored Shepard's orders and blundered out into the open. Three projectiles went speeding past them and smacked into the maw's hide, exploding on impact.

That succeeded only in pissing it off.

The only thing that kept Grunt from getting melted when the maw roared and spat at him was Jack's reflexes. Acting quickly, she threw a barrier up around the Krogan to shield him from the acid. Then before another attack could come, she yanked him back with her biotics behind a bit of ruined wall.

Shepard thought that maybe he could take the opportunity and get the thing in its... Eyes? Did it have eyes? Whatever, he got out his sniper rifle and aimed carefully for what looked squishiest. He got two shots off before he had to duck again though, because the angry thresher maw turned its massive head to focus on him and horked up more of that acid. Then the thing retreated back underground, and the rumbling underfoot resumed.

This wasn't working. They needed to use some strategy to beat this thing on foot. Missiles weren't doing shit, and Shepard doubted that two shotguns and a Carnifex could do much more. He needed to get creative.

"Jack!" he hollered, stepping out from cover and dropping the sniper rifle. "Gimme barrier support!"

"Are you fucking crazy?!" she yelled back.

He grinned. "Hell yeah!"

She must've decided that he had to have a plan to be doing something so insane, because a second later he felt her barriers come to life around him, making his face and scalp tingle without the helmet. With that out of the way, he was able to drop his focus on maintaining barriers of his own.

Shepard smirked, drew his Carnifex, and fired two shots at the ground. The rumbling underneath his feet almost instantly grew to be about five times stronger than before. Perfect.

The thresher maw broke ground again barely a couple of meters away, forcing him to take a step back so that he wouldn't be swallowed up by the sudden hole in the ground. He could feel its breath even through the barriers.

He focused his biotics into the biggest damn singularity he could manage, and sent the resulting dark energy ball down the maw's gullet when the thing opened its massive mouth. Then he sent a warp down after it just as the monster's piercingly loud shriek of pain from having a fucking mass effect field tangled in its throat pierced his ears.

Even thresher maws weren't immune to biotic combo explosions. The only thing that kept him from getting covered in guts was Jack's barrier as the thresher maw was blown apart from the inside.

When the dust and thresher maw bits had finally settled he looked over at where Grunt and Jack were both standing, grinned at their stunned looks, and calmly holstered his Carnifex as he began walking back over to where he'd set his sniper rifle down.

Now  _that_ was fun.

\---

Of course Uvenk tried to meet them on the way back, and of course he tried to recruit Grunt as some kind of thresher maw-killing figurehead. Somehow, Shepard wouldn't have expected any less.

It didn't matter. Bright-Armor Guy was still just as susceptible to Grunt's shotgun as everything else was in the end, and after that they were able to head back to the compound without incident.

The minute Shepard hopped out of the ATV, Kasumi materialized beside him. "Word on the street is that somebody killed a thresher maw on foot," she said cheerfully. "You wouldn't know anything about that, would you? Because you smell like you've been puked on by a Vorcha on a ryncol bender."

"Who me?" Shepard grinned. "Nah. Not a thing."

"Good, because I'd have to be very upset with you for not letting me come along. Usually I'm not one for animals, but the bits from one of those things can be worth a fortune on the black market if you know the right buyer. Rich people love their trophies and quaint homeopathic remedies, you know." She had a knife, of course. Where had she gotten the knife? Who knew with Kasumi.

Jack smirked at the other woman as she climbed out of the ATV after Shepard, having a little trouble just because she was as small as she was and krogan ATVs weren't made for small humans. "Shit, even if you had come along you'd be outta luck with that. I'm not even sure enough of that sonnuvabitch was left intact to do anything with after we were done with it."

Kasumi mock-gasped and gave Shepard a playful shove; he laughed even if he didn't shove her back. "Shepard, how could you? You could have at least brought back one of the vertebrae or something."

"Sorry, Kasumi." He wasn't really sorry. Kasumi was good in her own way, but she wasn't meant to take on thresher maws. "How're Zaeed and Mordin doing?"

"Zaeed accidentally made friends with a really scraggly varren by feeding it and now it won't stop following him," she said. "He might want to take it back with him. Would that be all right?"

"Sure, so long as he takes care of it and doesn't let it chew on anything vital." Shepard got the feeling from Kasumi's coy smile that she might've instigated it in the first place, even if he wasn't quite sure how. "And Mordin?"

"Oh, he's talking with this one guy who calls himself a scientist. Do Krogan even have scientists?"

"You need scientists to figure out how to make guns."

"I suppose. Anyway, he figured out where his friend is. Somewhere in a Blood Pack compound, I think? I don't know. You'd have to ask him for the details. I was too busy trying to figure out why so little of the electronic things here have been adapted to haptic interfaces instead of push-buttons and cranks." Her nose crinkled at the idea of such dated tech. "Seriously, why?"

"Well, it depends on whether or not they're using analog or quantum computing. You need the latter for a processor that can handle a haptic interface, and a lot of older shit would need a major retrofit to accomodate the tech. That's a lot of credits to dump into a nonessential thing if the analog interface is still working."

"You mean if the button still pushes."

Shepard nodded. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." Regular maintenance on an analog interface also required less technical expertise and programming knowledge anyway. Percussive maintenance could still work, for instance.

Grunt chose that moment to burst forth from the ATV with a loud guffaw, nearly barreling into Kasumi in the process. She squeaked and stumbled, but Shepard caught her by the arms before she could fall. Meanwhile Jack rolled her eyes and made a disgusted noise, then promptly wandered off.

"What crawled up her ass and died?" Shepard mumbled to himself.

Kasumi patted him gently on the shoulder. "Oh, Shep. It's cute how little you know sometimes."

\---

"Shepard is my battlemaster," Grunt had said. "He has no match."

Somehow, hearing that from a Krogan had made Shepard's day. Like, yeah. He knew the galaxy was still going to shit, he knew the Collectors were probably looking to wipe out as many pesky humans as possible so the Reapers wouldn't have to deal with their stubborn asses, and he knew that Kaidan was still very, very gone. But that? That was high praise. Higher still when Wrex laughed and didn't dispute it or mock it.

Finding Mordin's old pupil was easy in comparison. They were even done before dinner. Shepard brought the whole squad for that - all five of them - and while it was a bit of a clusterfuck logistically, it was also ridiculously easy to tear through the Blood Pack goons between the six of them.

It was a horrorshow, of course. How wouldn't it be? Unethical experiments that were trying to fast-track a genophage cure, hell yeah it was going to be a mess of bodies and mutilation and grossness. Kasumi almost looked like she was going to be sick at one point. Then they got to Mordin's old pupil only to find that the guy had done it all willingly and knowingly.

So that was pretty bad, sure, but it wasn't the thing that brought Shepard's mood down. What brought his mood down was how after they'd gotten back to the compound, Mordin took him aside and showed him the results of the scans done on Jack's modified amp and the connection to her implants.

The amp was doing fine. Working exactly as intended, with a rudimentary VI monitoring the signals that her brain sent to the rest of her nervous system in real time and adjusting power usage accordingly. Shepard's was doing the same, and he had to admit that he hadn't overheated it once over the course of the day. Jack hadn't burned hers out either to his knowledge, so it seemed to be a viable thing to do even if it meant they couldn't borrow each others' spare amps anymore.

No, the problem wasn't the amp. The problem was that Mordin had found scarring and dead tissue around the site of Jack's implants. Progressive neural degeneration, he'd called it. Even just over the course of that day, Jack had managed to burn away a few more cells that wouldn't ever fully regenerate. Mordin theorized that this had been going on for years, but her situation made it hard to tell whether it was the fault of her implants or the experimentation she'd been subjected to.

Shepard found himself watching her a lot more often - as they ate their rations for the evening, as she and Zaeed bickered about the varren he'd picked up (he told her to fuck off because it was none of her goddamn business, and she told him to just keep it the fuck away from her and her junk), and even on the ride back to the ship in the shuttle. Most of the time she'd catch it and glare back, but sometimes when she noticed it she'd glance quickly away and frown. Her hands were always moving, always fidgeting. Sometimes she flexed and shifted them like the joints were locking up.

On the rare occasion that he saw her holding still, he was able to notice why she kept her hands moving: to hide the faint ever-present trembling.

They got back to the  _Normandy_ , and Shepard stayed in the CIC just long enough to give Joker some time-wasting surveying to do before he headed down to the lower decks to talk to her. He needed to see if she knew. If she didn't, he'd tell her. 

He was still in his armor from Tuchanka when he saw her on her cot down in the hold. He opened his mouth to speak, but her lips twisted into a sneer when she saw him and she bolted up off the little cot to stomp over and get right in his face. He was just a hair taller, plus what height his boots managed to add, and yet she was still able to intimidate him into silence.

"Look, jackass," she spat. "I don't know what the hell it is that's going through your head, but I don't like being jerked around."

He blinked. "Oookay?"

That must not have been the answer she was looking for, because she narrowed her eyes and grabbed him by the edge of his armor. "Don't play dumb. You come down here with all your concern, and all your questions about how my fucking day's going. You think I didn't notice you staring at me?"

Wait, was that what everything was about? What was it with people getting the wrong idea? First Liara way back, then Miranda, and now Jack too? "Just what the hell kind of person do you take me for, Jack?"

"A guy. One who's been staring at my tits since I got on this damn boat." She let him go with an irritated sigh. "Whatever. Do you wanna fuck me or not?"

The question was so out of the left field to him that he was absolutely dumbfounded. But what was perhaps even more shocking to him was that the part of him that may've gone  _sure, why not_ was totally silent. 

Holy shit. He had absolutely no desire to sleep with her. He couldn't even picture it in his head properly. Since when had that been the case? Just a couple weeks ago he would've leapt at the chance. He would've invited her into his bed in a heartbeat and they would've had hot biotic sex until Miranda knocked on the door to yell at them for making so much noise that people could hear them two decks down. Seriously, how many times had he thought about mapping every inch of those tattoos with his mouth?

Well, if he were to be honest with himself, it was probably something like twice. And both times had been before Horizon. "I... Not really, no," he said eventually.

Her features became pinched with a look of distaste. "What, so you just wanna be friends or some shit?"

"I guess," he replied with a shrug. "That a bad thing?"

Jack stared at him for a long time. "...I don't get you. The fuck were you staring at me for on Tuchanka then?"

"Did Mordin tell you what he found out about your implants?"

"Psh. Is that what this is about?" She rolled her eyes, shook her head, and stalked back over to her cot before flopping down on it. "I'm not gonna die, and I'm not gonna go crazy. That's what matters."

He knew that. He was more worried about whether or not she was okay with it. But since she seemed to know about it already, he really didn't have much more to say about it. "Right. Uh, sorry I gave you the wrong impression. I still think you're hot, I'm just not interested."

If she was insulted by his snub, then he couldn't see it. She picked up a datapad and didn't look at him again. "Fuckin' weirdo." Usually in Jack-terms that meant the conversation was over, so he turned and started to leave. "Hey Shep?" she said before he was out of earshot, and he stopped.

She was still talking to him at least, so he figured he was probably mostly forgiven. "Yeah?"

"You said Cerberus gave you the L5x implants too, right?" Her tone was casual, almost bored. "Just sayin'. Might wanna worry about yourself instead of getting tied all up into knots about me. Fuckin' creeps people out when you stare at 'em like that."

Damn, he hadn't even thought of that.


End file.
